By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Sept. 29, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

The National Organizer of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) may be right that the unacceptable incidence of multiple registration of voters on the nation’s Voters’ Register is widely known by key operatives of both major parties, including, of course, the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP). The difference here, though, is that while the key operatives of the NDC clearly appear to find absolutely nothing wrong with criminally stacking up the names and vital statistics of foreign nationals onto the country’s Voters’ Register, the NPP, which has been shown to stand to lose the most, if the current state of heavy contamination of the Voters’ Register is allowed to stand, has been vehemently agitating for the establishment of a new Voters’ Register altogether (See “NPP’s Electoral Register ‘Bombshell’ Is Not New – Kofi Adams” 9/29/15).

We must also note for the record that the decision by the Electoral Commissioner, Mrs. Charlotte Kesson-Osei, to solicit proposals from the leadership of the various legitimately registered political parties, in a bid to improving the quality of our electoral process, has been singularly championed by the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party. For the most part, the National Democratic Congress, led by General-Secretary Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, has been vehemently protesting any attempt to clean up the Voters’ Register. And so contrary to what Mr. Adams would have the rest of us believe the NDC leaders, including President John Dramani Mahama, have not been forthcoming. This is hardly surprising because the NDC does not have any enviable track record of facilitating the salutary development of a democratic political culture in the country. In sum, it can be aptly said that Ghanaian democracy has been steadily pacing up, in spite of mischievous attempts by the key operatives of the National Democratic Congress to forcibly regress the same.

At best, party hacks like Messrs. Adams and Asiedu-Nketia could be described as reluctant collaborators in the development of Fourth Republican Ghanaian democracy. It is also quite amusing to hear Mr. Adams, a former water-carrier for Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, assert that the biometric technology used by the Electoral Commission has not been programmed to ferret out multiple registration of eligible voters when, in fact, the diametrically opposite situation is the case.

For, to be certain, the biometric voting system was introduced into the country precisely because of its widely touted capacity to weeding out the multiple registration of voters. Indeed, I have often maintained that one great problem blighting the integrity and transparency of Ghana’s electoral culture are party apparatchiks like Messrs. Adams and Asiedu-Nketia who have, time and again, scandalously demonstrated themselves to be bereft of the human faculty of shame, obviously because they are determined to lord it over longsuffering Ghanaian citizens come rain or shine.