Gbevlo Lartey mocks Supreme Court's judgement on NHIS voters

Former National Security Coordinator, Lieutenant Colonel (rtd) Larry Gbevlo-Lartey, has pointed out the ‘absurdity’ in the Supreme Court’s order to the Electoral Commission to delete and re-register persons who registered with National Health Insurance Cards.

The security capo, who doubles as lawyer, laughed off the Supreme Court’s decision to allow voters affected by its order to use other forms of identification which could have been procured by NHI cards to get back onto the register.

Lieutenant Colonel (rtd) Larry Gbevlo-Lartey, who was appointed Special Representative in charge of Counter Terrorism Cooperation and, concurrently, as Director of the Algiers-based African Center for the Study and Research on Terrorism, made the observation in his usual satirical but thought provoking Facebook post.

The former National Security Coordinator is noted for stimulating write ups on social media which normally come in the form of an admirer soliciting his views on national issues.

In one of his recent post intended to engender debate on the Supreme Court judgment in the Abu Ramadan and EC case, Col. Gbevlo-Lartey wrote, “What my fisherman friend sent me: ‘ I used my NHIS card to obtain my VOTER ID. I used my VOTER ID to obtain my passport, now my name has been deleted from the voters' register because it has suddenly become illegal to use NHI card. But it's simple, now I'm going to use my passport to obtain my new VOTER ID. So what is the big deal? Waste of funds to print a new card for me. These lawyers will kill us."

My response: “Please send me some fish. Things are not balancing. As for your voter Id, I think you have solved the problem. Congrats."

His post, which has been widely circulated on social media, particularly whatsapp platforms,has opened anew angle of debate on the apex court’s judgment, principally because it did not feature in all the discussions on the issue over the NHI registrants.

The EC was ordered by the apex court in a May 5 judgment to delete from the voter register names of persons who registered using the NHI cards and allow them to reregister using appropriate means of identification.

This was occasioned by a suit against the election management body and the Attorney General by two plaintiffs, Abu Ramadan of the People’s National Convention (PNC), and one Evans Nimako.

The EC on Tuesday July 12 announced that it has deleted names of 56,000 affected persons and has accordingly published it in the dailies, regional, district and on the EC’s website ahead of re-registration from the 18-28 July, 2016.

Thewhole exercise occasioned by the apex court’s judgment, Lieutenant Colonel (rtd) Larry Gbevlo-Lartey noted, is waste of government’s scarce resources in printing new voter ID cards for affected persons.