Dr Eric Bossman Asare
Time and again, we have drawn attention to the dangers of the extreme partisan politics in our country today.
The politics of the opposition is to oppose everything introduced or suggested by the government or a state agency. And the reason for such actions is simply that the government wants to entrench itself in power even if such policies would inure to the benefit of all.
This obviously, distinguishing characteristics of, especially the NDC opposition, makes us wonder whether the umbrella party is just behaving to its true “persona” or it is set to wreck the ship of state.
The Fourth Republic abounds with evidences of unnecessary protestations when the government plans to introduce policies to advance the course of progress in the country. Back in the days there were protests against the introduction of policies such as VAT, GETFund, NHIS, Ghana Card, free SHS, digitalisation, One District One Factory and others, but subsequently the succeeding governments have used such policies as vehicles to advance national development.
Currently ongoing is the limited registration exercise by the Electoral Commission (EC) meant to give opportunity to those who have attained the age of 18 and those who could not register in 2020. We all know the frustrations that the EC endured when it sent the accompanying CI to Parliament to give it the power to undertake the exercise.
The NDC Minority was the first to raise the red flag that what the EC proposed to do was going to disenfranchise prospective voters by limiting the exercise to only its district offices and the sole use of the Ghana Card as a requirement to register but no more the guarantor system.
The sensible argument by the EC that the guarantor system was not robust enough to ward off aliens and children from the registration centres was rejected by the NDC leadership and the Minority in Parliament.
It virtually became a fight in Parliament when the Majority Leader said Parliament did not have the right to block the CI. The Speaker got into the fray somehow “backing” his roots to frustrate the EC. Back and forth, it appears the EC agreed to the guarantor system to allow the exercise to proceed and enfranchise more people to vote in the December 19 district level elections.
We wonder whether reports from the registration centres convince the NDC that they, including their leader, former President John Mahama are helping to advance the frontiers of our democracy by ensuring that unqualified people do not have their names on the electoral roll.
From time immemorial, the NDC has held the position that any “living thing” in Ghana qualifies to register, even aliens and minors. After all, Mahama thinks there are no aliens in the country while with the evidence of children registering at some centres the NDC’s General Secretary, Fiifi Kwetey, is in denial claiming the reports are unverified.
Fiifi Kwetey is bespectacled, so in this particular instance, he must have put on an opaque spectacle while watching the video of those minors in the queue.