Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, has given an assurance that a National Democratic Congress (NDC) government will make it natural for the Electoral Commission (EC) to register all qualified Ghanaian citizens and issue them with voter identity cards.
This, he said, would be done within the 100 days of coming into power.
According to him, the NDC intends to do that by deploying acceptable electronic technology, which would work into the future of electronic voting for Ghana.
Mr Iddrisu gave the assurance when he briefed the press in Parliament House after the House had voted to accept the Report of the Committee on Subsidiary Legislation on the Public Elections (Registration of Voters) (Amendment) Regulations, 2020 (C.I 126).
The House, moments earlier, by a division, which was won by 106 to 92, adopted a motion to accept CI 126 introduced by the EC to proscribe the use of the Ghanaian Birth Certificate and the Ghanaian Voter Identity Card as valid documents to be used for the registration of a new Voter Identity card for the 2020 general election.
Mr Iddrisu maintained that the NDC was persuaded to stand by the Ghanaian public, whose right to vote had remained entrenched and guaranteed under the 1992 Constitution.
He said many Ghanaians in the future would appreciate the principled position taken by the party as political opposition and Minority against the EC’s exclusion of the birth certificate and voter’s identity card.
“Many of you, going forward and into the future, would appreciate the principled position we have taken as political opposition and political minority, wary of our numbers, it is not a vote we could win or easily win, but we are persuaded to stand by the Ghanaian public whose right to vote, remain entrenched and guaranteed under the 1992 Constitution,” he added.
Mr Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, the Majority Leader, reacting to the Minority’s press conference, explained the various processes from the time the report was laid last Friday in Parliament till the debate issues and the final voting by Majority 106 to Minority 92.
He accused the Minority NDC caucus of shifting the goalposts on the issues of the electoral register from insufficient budget allocation to the EC, and now to the birth certificate.
He went down memory lane to 1992, and noted that when the first Voters Register was being compiled, the birth certificate was never used, so was the 1995 and 2012 re-registration exercise.
Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu also explained that the remit of the Committee on Subsidiary Legislation was defined by Standing Order 166 and their task was to prove whether the CI brought by the EC infringes any constitutional law.
He said the EC officials made it known to the Committee when they debated the estimates of the EC’s budget in December that they were going to compile a new Voters Register and that they would not use the birth certificate.
