Voters registration: Are you doing anybody a favour?– Randy Abbey reacts to EC’s budget constraint ‘excuse’

Television host, Dr. Randy Abbey has criticised the Electoral Commission's decision to limit the ongoing Limited Voter Registration Exercise to district offices, rather than the entire electoral areas across the country.

He questioned the commission's rationale for making such a budgetary decision to limit voter registration when there was no legal requirement to do so.

It can be recalled that the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC), Jean Mensa told the public in a press conference on September 18, 2033, that the commission limited the registration exercise to the district offices because it did not include in its budget, the whole of the electoral areas in the country.

The TV host said that this posture of the EC suggests that they are doing the public a favour by delaying the registration process.

“No law asked you to go and do a budget that is just for district offices, nobody. You decided even when you did not have a Constitutional Instrument (CI) to back restricting district offices. You sat in your office and decided that this is what you intended doing so you will do a budget exclusively for this. And now, you and say, ‘Don’t worry next year you will have the opportunity to register’, are you doing anybody a favour?” Dr Abbey questioned.

Dr Abbey further emphasised that the right to be registered once an individual turns 18 is a constitutional right, and the Electoral Commission's role is to facilitate this process.

He expressed disappointment that the commission appears to talk down to citizens any time concerns are raised against its decision on the limited voter registration exercise.

“They appear to talk down on the citizenry and speak as if they are doing somebody a favour. A Ghanaian has the right to be registered once he turns 18. It is a constitutional right. The constitution has created a vehicle to facilitate this which is the electoral commission. You have been employed to do the same by the law. You should have done one for those who turned 18 or were not on the roster in 2020 and 2021, it didn’t happen, 2022 it didn’t happen.

“In 2023, you decided that you were going to do it at 268 when in 2019 your limited registration target where even you were lower than this, yet you did it at 1500 places. And then when people talk about difficult-to-reach areas and not being able to get on the roll and all that, you say ‘don’t worry next year,” he said.

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He added “Those who turned 18 from 2021 or were not on the roll for whichever reason in 2020 and were expecting to be there in 2021 and 2022 but they couldn’t. Because you did not give them the opportunity to. There have been by-elections and they were not able to exercise their franchise.
District assembly elections is coming up, we do not know if there will be other elections before this registration thing you are talking about."

NW/AW

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