EC set for verification

A top official of the Electoral Commission (EC) has given the assurance that the thorny issue of verification has been addressed but pleaded that the electorate must be encouraged to protect ballot boxes and protect the electoral system.

David Adeenze-Kanga, Deputy Commissioner of the EC in charge of Finance and Administration, gave the assurance during an engagement with Catholic Bishops on the biometric registration which is about to be introduced in the country at the Conference Hall of the National Catholic Secretariat in Accra.

Data, he explained, would have to be collated before verification could take place, adding that at the polling stations it would be possible to slot in a laminated biometric card and verify information on the voter.

No special verification machines would therefore be needed to be acquired for that matter, he said, stressing that continuous registration would be conducted at district offices.

The clergymen went through a sample biometric registration procedure as a way of sensitizing them about the novelty electoral system as part of a programme dubbed “Civic Agenda for Smooth Political Transition.’ They were given dummy biometric registration cards.

The programme is a partnership arrangement with STAR-Ghana to empower civil society and parliaments toward ensuring good governance and service delivery. The programme emanates from the Annual Plenary Assembly of the Conference of Catholic Bishops in Takoradi in 2011, during which the Conference issued a communiqué under the theme “Good Governance for Peace.”

The communiqué demanded a smooth introduction of the biometric registration and Voting System.

In attendance were heads of other Faith Based Organizations including Very Rev. Henry Ampaw-Asiedu from the Methodist Church of Ghana, Rev. Dominic Nii Tetteh Tackie from the Pentecostal Church and Alhaji Adam Musah Abubakar from the Office of the Chief Imam as well as Emmanuel Bombande, Executive Secretary of West African Network for Peace (WANEP), a collaborating agency with the Bishops’ Conference.

A Technical Team from Superlock Technologies Limited (STL) demonstrated how the process works, highlighting the security mechanisms in the process.

The deputy commisioner briefed the entire Bishops’ Conference on the adoption of the Biometric Registration System which he said was primarily from recommendations of a review sub-committee constituted by the Commission after the 2008 general elections.

Mr. Adeenze-Kanga highlighted the advantages of the biometric registration system.

He said the facial as well as biometric features of all the ten fingers of the potential voter would be captured and stored in the voter’s card.

There would also be a receipt issued to all registered voters alongside the imprinting of a bar code on the laminated biometric card, which would make it difficult for people to impersonate and make false representation.

Double registration, he noted, would easily be detected and eliminated and all registration information would be compiled, collated and stored into a national data base.

Biometric registration kits comprising laptop computers, finger prints, scanners and digital cameras, he disclosed, would be made available at registration centres to capture the registration forms directly with inbuilt power and generators available he assured.

According to Mr. Adeenze-Kanga, the commission would require a total of 23000 kits to cover all centres in the country.

As a first step, he noted, the commission had decided to acquire 7000 kits which it could manage effectively using a strategy of allocating a kit to work in a number of registration centres or a cluster of registration centres.

The whole country, according to him, could therefore be covered in a matter of 56 days.

The National Identification Authority (NIA), he said, has been mandated to tackle the issue of foreigners.

He said the law allows political parties to act as check on one another, adding that “unfortunately intimidation is still the order of the day in some so-called ‘party strongholds’.”

The Catholic bishops consider the engagement as the beginning of the Conference’s education programme on the biometric registration system which would be extended to the four provinces and 20 Dioceses of the country.

Roman Catholics have found in effective electoral systems an antidote to violence during and after elections in Africa.

In the Congo, they described as flawed the voting which saw the election of Joseph Kabila for a second term as President of the mineral-rich country.

The Ghanaian Catholic Conference was rubbished for the concerns it raised about a biometric registration without a verification mechanism when it held its penultimate conference.