Change register – Akua Donkor’s party tells EC

Leadership of Madam Akua Donkor’s Ghana Freedom Party (GFP) has joined calls for a new voters’ register ahead of the 2016 general elections, almost leaving the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) as one of the few political parties against the proposition for a new electoral roll.

Led by its Chairman, Kwaku Abankwa and General Secretary, Agyenim Boateng, the national executives of the party including National Organiser Ernest Berko, Communications Director Alex Ababio, Women’s Organiser Juliet Mamoud and her Deputy, Doreen Amoako sent a proposal to the Electoral Commission (EC) detailing reasons they support demands for an entirely new voters’ register as pushed by the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Let My Vote Count Alliance (LMVCA) and other pressure groups.

“We are of the strongest opinion to humbly ask your august Institution which has the independent mandate to steer the affairs of the country’s elections to consider our views for a new national voters’ register,” they stated.

According to them, “it is obvious almost all political parties perceive the existing political voter register as bloated, making it lose its credibility; and this can jeopardise the future security of the country if something drastic is not done to correct the anomaly.”

The position of the national executives of the party is at variance with what the founder of the GFP, Madam Akua Donkor, has been espousing since the whole debate over the call for a new voters’ register began.

Akua Donkor has literally been left a lone ranger in her support for the ruling National Democratic Congress’ (NDC’s) position that there is no need for the compilation of a new voters’ register, as her national executives have said they “share in the widely held view across the political parties and the nation at large that the 2012 voters’ register is bloated with flaws.”

Chief among their reasons was the fact that the current and existing voters’ register which was used in the conduct of the 2012 general elections is fraught with the names of minors and foreign nationals, which according to them “gives room for mistrust in the register, making it lose its credibility.”

For them, “the argument that the names of minors found in the register should be allowed to stay in it till they reach 18 years is preposterous, since it falls flat against the provision of the electoral laws which stipulate that only people who are 18 years and above and are of sound mind are eligible to be registered to vote in Ghana’s elections.”

Also, they indicated that there is a court ruling against the use of the health insurance card for national voter’s registration since it was realised that some foreign nationals who were part of the insurance scheme participated in the national registration exercise which produced the register that was used for the 2012 general elections.

This, according to them, “therefore makes the voters’ register to be void; hence it cannot be used for future elections in Ghana.”

That aside, leadership of the party said “we are of the belief that some EC officials were influenced by some political parties to bloat the 2012 voters’ register” and that they have reliable information to the effect that “some EC officials were motivated financially to connive with a particular party in the 2012 general elections to rig the elections.”

“We currently have information that some people have been posted to some strategic constituencies in the country for schemed electoral malpractices ahead of the 2016 general elections; and thus we want to prompt the EC and all stakeholders to be vigilant to avert this situation,” they noted.

That, they said, was evident in the fact that “during the Supreme Court trial over the 2012 election petition, Dr Afari Gyan, the former chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC) himself confirmed that the register contained 5,000 Ghanaians living abroad (Diasporas), but it turned out that only 700 of them were truly identified in the register; and even among this number only 55 were able to vote during the 2012 elections.”

“As a political party, our investigations revealed that the current civil war in Ivory Coast made it possible to transport nearly 1.3 million refugees into the country and as a result of that about 978,000 of them registered and voted in Ghanaian elections in 2012. Therefore, we want to say that the claim does not hold,” they emphasised, insisting on a mechanism to distinguish Ghanaian voters living in border towns from Togolese and other nationals.

Touching on the NPP’s Dr Mahamudu Bawumia’s claim that some 75,286, 000 Togolese names were found in Ghana’s voters’ register, representing 10 percent of the total number of the voter population on the register, leadership of Akua Donkor’s party said “if this is anything to go by, then one can assume that 100 percent of these voters in the register can be estimated to be four million,” a situation they said was very disturbing, noting that this should be a basis for a new voter register and not just cleaning it.