Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the suit brought against the Electoral Commission (EC) headed by Charlotte Osei have filed a motion in
opposition to the 56,000 names of persons who used the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) cards as a means of identification to register prior to the 2012 elections.
The electoral body on Thursday submitted the list of persons to the five member panel of judges presided over by Chief Justice Georgina Wood but the plaintiff’s lawyers insisted the list was “spurious, conjured and fictitious”.
Consequently, the panel of judges ordered the lawyers for the plaintiffs- Abu Ramadan, a former General Secretary of the People’s National Convention (PNC) and Evans Nimako to file their written objection to the list by 11am yesterday.
Already the apex court has set today to deliver its ruling over the plaintiff’s motion for clarification following a May 5 judgement from the court.
On May 5, 2016 the Supreme Court asked the EC to remove from the current voters’ register names of all persons who registered and voted in the 2012 elections, using the NHIS card as a proof of identity.
The ruling followed a suit filed by a former General Secretary of the People’s National Convention (PNC) Abu Ramadan, and Evans Nimako, who in 2014 won a lawsuit that barred the use of NHIS cards for registration.
Earlier, Frank Davies who represented the plaintiffs said numbers 18-55; 751-772; 774-797; 799-929 being the list of persons who registered with the NHIS cards from Afigya Kwabre District in the Ashanti Region for instance, had no NHIS card numbers.
Again, he contended that some of the lists with numbers had 6, 18, 12 and 5 digits adding that it was strange that per the list, only one person in the Asokwa Ashanti Akyem Central registered with NHIS cards.
According to him, it was puzzling that the list generated from the same source (Form 1A) was full of errors.
Thaddeus Sory, lawyer for the EC said the list was extracted from Form 1A and that it provides the ID used for the registration.
He insisted that the list was genuine adding that it was manually complied stressing that the mistakes were an oversight on the part of the registration officers who registered the persons.
By Jeffrey De-Graft Johnson
jeffdegraft44@yahoo.com