Minority calls for EC officials to explain rumours on new voter’s register in Parliament

The Minority Caucus in Parliament has called for the Electoral Commission to be summoned to the House next week to clear the air on rumours that it wants to compile a new voters’ register, using the Ghana Card for identification.

The Minority last week at a presser raised issues with the possibility of an alleged new register on the sole basis of the new Ghana card.

The caucus argues this would be a wasteful expenditure and would disenfranchise a lot of Ghanaians who have not registered or obtained their cards yet.

According to them, this decision would cost about $80 million.

Presently, the Subsidiary Legislation Committee is perusing a draft constitutional instrument (C I) on the registration of voters.

However, speaking on the floor of Parliament on Friday, Mr. Ahmed Ibrahim, the Deputy Minority Chief Whip, said the briefing could help prevent controversy.

“Now that the Subsidiary Legislation Committee is doing what we call pre-laying, maybe, the EC can appear before us next week before we adjourn so that when it comes and briefs us as a committee of the whole, then we juxtapose the two inputs and be able to see how we can find a way to solve these problems so that when the time comes, we wouldn’t be confronted with some controversial issues,” he said.

Contributing to the debate, Mr. Osei Bonsu Amoah, a Member of the Subsidiary Legislation Committee indicated that the committee had begun considering the draft C.I. and argued that there would be no need for the EC to be in the House.

“We have almost completed the discussions. Regarding the Ghana card guarantors, we asked the EC to go back and look at it; so, I don’t think there is any need to drag them here at this time,” Mr. Amoah said.

Source: GNA