Member of the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Committee and Member of Parliament for south Dayi, Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor, has reacted the Electoral Commission (EC) no guarantor decision.
Speaking on TV3 midday news, the Member of Parliament said, “The Commission ought to operate in accordance with law.”
The commission in its ‘Let The Citizens Know’ series of press engagement on Thursday of said it will not entertain guarantors in the limited registration exercise it intends to embark on.
“This registration exercise unlike the previous registration exercise will be continuous,” said Samuel Tettey, a Deputy Chair of the Commission.
“As such, anyone who has the card can just walk to our offices and register. It is not a periodic or limited registration exercise that could disenfranchise persons who do not have the Ghana Card at the time of the limited exercise. This is an all-year-round process. As such, a person who doesn’t have the Ghana Card today can acquire it tomorrow and simply walk into a district office where he or she intends to vote and register.” he added.
However, Mr. Dafeamekpor believes that the position of the Electoral commission is not feasible as many Ghanaians do not have access to the Ghana card.
“We interrogated the matter and advised that their decision to rely solely on the Ghana Card for purposes of conducting the present registration will not feasible because the Ghana Card is not in the hands of every Ghanaian who is 18 years.” he said.
Mr Dafeamekpor said the EC is only misconstruing the law and applying it in a manner that is inconsistent and that the only way to remedy the claim is to clean the register instead of adding to it.
“You want to add more numbers to the data you have [but] the data you already have contains certain number of names that entered onto the register using the guarantor system, so how do you say that that data is corrupt because certain persons entered using the very ‘corrupt’ means of guarantor system and therefore you want to rely only on Ghana Card.
“Your duty is now to clean that register if you think that register is not clean. You don’t add names to a register that you claim is not clean.”he added.
Source: theGhanaianvoice.com
