The majority leader addressing the press
The Majority in Parliament has thrown its weight behind the controversial Electoral Commission’s Constitutional Instrument(C.I) seeking to make the Ghana card the only proof of citizenship for voter registration.
According to the Majority caucus, the new Constitutional Instrument (CI) when passed into law will not disenfranchise Ghanaians in the 2024 general elections.
This follows the Minority caucus decision to reject the move by the EC and also casts doubts on the capacity of the NIA to issue Ghana cards to all applicants who have registered for the cards.
The EC with its new CI is seeking to use the Ghana Card as the source document for registration onto the voters register.
The Minority at a presser on Wednesday claimed the exercise would rather disenfranchise the vast majority of Ghanaians.
The Minority Leader, Cassiel Ato Forson, said there was nothing productive in the new Constitutional Instrument (CI) – the Public Elections (Registration of Voters) Instrument, 2022 – in its current state for it to be laid before Parliament.
Ato Forson said the Minority would in the coming days, collaborate with their mother party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), to hold a major forum on the subject to further explain the issues for Ghanaians to understand.
Majority Side
However, the Majority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu reacting to the Minority concern also stated that the new policy aims at sanitizing the electoral process.
He explained that “This is a system that has come to sanitize and purify our system. There are various institutions which recognize the integrity of the National Identification Authority and indeed the Ghana Cards and have resorted to the use of the Ghana Cards,”.
Majority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu further argued that there’s nothing wrong with the clauses in the new CI.
He said nobody including the Speaker Alban Bagbin can stop the laying of the constitutional instrument in parliament.
“I will not say that the Speaker has no business in what business is transacted in parliament, I wouldn’t say that at all, except to say that no speaker has the right to also say that I will not allow government’s business to be transacted. No Speaker has that authority,” the Majority Leader said.
The Suame MP however assured of continuous engagements with the minority for a consensus on the contentious CI.
”What we’re doing is trying to build consensus. We’ve been meeting behind the curtains engaging ourselves and all that, we’ll continue to do that and I believe that in the fullness of time sanity will prevail,” he stated.
EC Concerns
Already, the Deputy Chairman of the Electoral Commission in charge of Corporate Services, Dr Bossman Asare says his outfit is determined to see to the passage of the Constitutional Instrument (CI) that seeks to make the Ghana Card the sole document for voter registration.
According to Dr. Bossman Asare, the CI will improve on the verification system for voters, adding that Ghana has since the inception of the 1992 Constitution used the old process, but it is time to change.
“I don’t know if you know of any country where, let’s say in Togo, in Burkina Faso, in Britain where two British nationalities must vouch for somebody.
“It does not happen. This has been unique to Ghana and we think that we began this in 1992. We have come very far and we have made progress,” he said.
The Deputy EC Chairman said, “assuming the NIA stops its operations, then it means we cannot continue to rely on it or the government has decided that NIA is no longer necessary. But as long as the NIA is functioning and they are issuing the cards and they have opened their doors that people should come and register, we must just encourage.”
However, he called for collaborative efforts to improve the education of the populace.
-BY Daniel Bampoe