Naagyei 90.3 Fm Agyapa
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has initiated moves in Parliament to halt the move by the Electoral Commission (EC) to use the National Identification Card (Ghana Card) as the only evidence of citizenship for the compilation of a new register for the 2024 general election.
A petition seeking to halt the laying of a draft Constitutional Instrument (C.I.) titled: Public Elections (Registration of Voters) Regulations, 2021, was captured on the Order Paper for yesterday but was put on hold at the instance of the Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu.
Mr Iddrisu, who will present the petition in Parliament next week, explained that the rescheduling was to allow for an engagement with the Speaker, Alban Bagbin, as well as the leadership of Parliament.
Expected to regulate continuous voter registration, the draft C.I. has in it a proposal to make the Ghana Card the sole source document of identification for prospective voters.
Petition
According to the petition,, the NDC did not want the proposed C.I. to be laid until the backlog of Ghana cards, which the National Identification Authority (NIA) has admitted to, had been cleared.
Furthermore, it said the C.I., as subsidiary legislation, could not override the substantive provision in the Constitution on the citizens’ right to register and vote.
It pointed out that an insistence on the Ghana Card as the only evidence of citizenship would deny millions of citizens the right to register and vote.
Consequently, the NDC wanted other forms of evidence of citizenship, such as the Ghanaian passport and the guarantor system, to be added to the Ghana Card as evidence of citizenship in the proposed C.I.
“Any further action on the proposed C.I. by or in Parliament should be frozen until consultations have been initiated and concluded with the major stakeholders, especially the political parties, including the NDC, and civil society,” the petition added.
