An Accra High Court yesterday dismissed an emergency writ by the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) that was seeking to stop the Electoral Commission (EC) from going ahead with the one-day registration of eligible voters who could not participate in the mass exercise recently.
According to the court, the suit should have been filed on notice to allow the EC and the Attorney General who are the defendants in the matter to contest the case.
Once again, the NDC went to court challenging the decision of the EC to reopen the voters’ register for the one-day registration exercise which is expected to be done today.
According to a suit filed at the High Court, a failure by the EC to publish the decision to reopen the voters’ registration exercise in the Gazette for 21 days constitutes a breach of the law.
The suit was seeking “a declaration that the Electoral Commission cannot proceed to reopen and/or conduct the voters’ registration exercise slated for Thursday, 1st October, 2020 without first publishing in the Gazette, twenty-one (21) days’ notice of this voters’ registration to the political parties and the general public.”
“It is also seeking an order on the Electoral Commission to comply with the provisions of regulations 2(3), 9(3), 13(1), 13(2) and 31 of the Public Elections (Registration of Voters) Regulations, 2016 (C. I. 91) in order to properly register more voters for public elections in Ghana.”
Mop-up Exercise
The EC had announced its plans to reopen the voters’ register on October 1, 2020 to enable eligible voters who could not register “for one reason or the other” to do so.
Those considered by the EC for the exercise include eligible applicants who were under a 14-day mandatory quarantine and could, therefore, not participate in the main registration exercise which commenced on June 30 and ended on August 6.
There is also a chance for eligible voters who were duly issued voter ID cards but whose names are missing from the register in the ongoing exhibition as well as those who were outside the country due to the Covid-19 restrictions.
However, the opposition party had sought to restrain the commission from reopening and/or conducting any voters’ registration for public elections “without first publishing in the Gazette, twenty-one (21) days’ notice of this voters’ registration to the political parties and the general public.”
BY Gibril Abdul Razak