By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
July 31, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]
This is about the second or third time that I have heard the call come from the leaders of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) for the Voters' Register to be scrapped and completely recomposed. I know the Electoral Commission (EC) is endowed with quite a generous annual budget, though I am also very mindful of the fact that the adjective "generous" is being used in a relative context. In other words, if I were on the losing end of two general elections, like the Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party, I would probably also be calling for the recreation of a new Voters' Register.
Indeed, it may have been one of the prime recommendations of the Atuguba-presided Supreme Court panel that adjudicated the Akufo-Addo-led 2012 Presidential-Election Petition. But it was only one of a slew of the recommendations made by the SCOG (Supreme Court of Ghana). Others had to do with the actual voting protocol and conduct of polling officials, observers and agents. I would rather concentrate on the actual process of voting and the procedure by which eligible prospective voters are identified by polling agents and allowed to vote. And if this has not already been effected, then I would advise that all future voters' registration exercises be accompanied by the issuance of National Identity/Identification Cards (NIDs). These ought to be the cards which polling station agents and officials must demand before allowing any prospective voter to proceed through with the biometric voting process or system.
All underage citizens - that is, Ghanaians below 18years old - should be issued a different type of National ID Cards, which should be upgraded once a minor citizen turns 18 years old. Scrapping the Voters' Register every four years because somebody was not pleased with the outcome of the last election must not be made a part of Ghana's democratic political culture. It is at once unreasonable and absurd. It is also an unnecessary waste of money. What needs to be done, instead, is to have the current Voters' Register meticulously audited, with a focus placed on weeding out the names of residents who may have vacated their respective locations or neighborhood and regions. Then also, of course, voters who may have passed on since the end of the last election season.
Auditors may also want to focus on underage citizens who may have been either deliberately or inadvertently entered into the Voters' Register. Where any act of criminality is envisaged to have occurred, the necessary legal sanctions ought to be exacted. I mention this unsavory, routine and unarguably criminal registration of ineligible minors because during the 2012 Presidential-Election Petition, Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, the recently retired Electoral Commissioner, admitted in open court, before the Atuguba-presided panel of the Supreme Court, that an unspecified number of underage citizens had been registered to vote. While this act of criminality may have prevailed throughout the country, it was probably more widespread in regions and localities with a high level of illiteracy.
Whatever the real situation on the ground may be, the newly appointed Electoral Commissioner, Mrs. Charlotte Osei, ought to make it her utmost priority and obligation to ensure that the criminal frequency of underage voting is reduced to the barest minimum. I like to believe that while Ghana is inescapably a Third World country, at least judging by the way and manner in which we approach matters of gravity, nevertheless, Ghana as a nation is civilized enough to shear itself of such primitive and regressive electoral anomaly as underage voting.
What was eve more disturbing was the fact that while he casually admitted to having registered a remarkable percentage of underage voters, nevertheless, Dr. Afari-Gyan maintained that there was absolutely nothing that he could do to prevent ineligible registered minors/children from voting, and that it was up to these illegally registered minors themselves to decide whether to vote or not. If this is not a deliberate act of criminality on the part of Dr. Afari-Gyan, then one does not know what else it is. These children are still on the Voters' Register, by the way.
In an editorial trenchantly captioned "Brash, Cocky," the Daily Guide takes exception to a snappy and cheeky statement reportedly issued by Mr. Christian Parry, Public Relations Manager at the Electoral Commission, to the effect that under no circumstances would calls for the establishment of a new Voters' Register be complied with. Now, I unreservedly agree with the editors and publishers of the Freddie Blay-owned Daily Guide newspaper that Mr. Parry has no business presuming to speak for Mrs. Osei on this critical issue. In principle, though, while he may have used a language unbecoming of an EC-PRM, nevertheless, as already observed above, what we need in the lead-up to Election 2016 is a well-audited Voters' Register, and not the costly establishment of one from scratch.
We also closely need to monitor who gets into the Voters' Register between now and the cut-off point for newly eligible voters to register to vote. If my close monitoring of wrangling and bitter infighting among the leadership of the New Patriotic Party is anything to go by, the NPP has more to worry about the conduct of its own leadership apparatus than the Voters' Register as it presently exists, or whether the current one needed to be scrapped and totally recomposed.
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