Minority parties urge Parliament to support Electoral Commission’s new C.I

Political parties with no representation in Parliament have called on the Legislature to support the Electoral Commission (EC) to lay its new Constitutional Instrument (C.I) in the House.

According to the Group, the new C.I. would guarantee the integrity and credibility of the voters’ register and reduce chaos at registration centres.

“The lives of voters matter and we need to protect and ensure that agitations are reduced to the barest minimum,” they said.

Mr Ato Dadzie, General Secretary for the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP) and Spokesperson for the Group, made the call at a press conference in Accra.

Mr Dadzie explained that discussions for a new C.I to introduce the National Identification card as evidence of identity to apply for voter registration started in October 2021.

He said it was preceded by a two-day retreat by the EC at the Alisa hotel in April to discuss the 2020 Presidential and Parliamentary elections.

He said the EC wrote to 24 political parties at the time to inform them to attend an IPAC meeting on November 24, 2021, to discuss a draft of the new C.I., which was attached to their letter.

“We all engaged in a lot of deliberations and series of meetings, which included civil society organisations for almost a year and resolved to accept to use the National Identification Card as evidence of identification to anyone who applies for registration as a voter” he said.

Mr Dadzie said since the law could not take retrospective effect under the 1992 constitution, persons who were yet to be registered voters would require only the National Identification card as evidence of identification to deal with the issues of having minors and foreigners on the voters’ register.

Mr Dadzie said since the beginning of the 4th republic, both the New Patriotic Party and the National Democratic Congress had levelled several accusations against themselves, including the busing of supporters and sometimes minors and foreigners to registration centres.

He said those accusations had sometimes led to fisticuffs and gunshots at registration centres resulting in those centres being labelled as flash points.

Mr Dadzie said the Group would, therefore, welcome a system to prevent minors and foreigners from being on the voters register.