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Bawumia outlines five reasons why Ghana needs a new voters’ register

Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia says the NPP have discovered evidence that shows that close to 80,000 Togolese have registered on the voters’ register

Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia

The 2016 vice presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party has outlined reasons why the current voters’ register is flawed and unfit for purpose, requiring, therefore, the need for the compilation of a new voters’ register ahead of the conduct of the 2016 general elections.

On the final day of the “Rise and Build Tour” in the Eastern Region, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, whilst addressing party faithful, stated that activists of the National Democratic Congress, who have so far acted as public relations officers for the Electoral Commission, have raised no arguments, except those of a tribal nature, to discount the evidence adduced by the NPP about the existence of foreigners on Ghana’s voters’ roll of foreign voters, whose details were not captured in a live environment, but rather had their pictures scanned into the database of the EC.  This, according to Dr. Bawumia, could only have been done by personnel who had the authorisation and passcodes to the database of the EC, to enable them input the details of these voters into the voters’ register.“By this action, the integrity of the voters’ register has been compromised. Clearly, we cannot trust the current handlers and managers of the register,” he said.The NDC’s so-called biometric registration of its members across the country, was the second reason outlined by Dr. Bawumia, stating categorically that there is nothing “biometric” about the NDC’s ongoing registration of its members.“All the NDC is doing is going around and asking for the voter ID card number of members, as well as their polling station codes. They don’t collect your fingerprints, they don’t even take your picture. The NDC then generates a membership card containing the exact same picture and biometric details as contained in the national voters’ register,” he said.“How did they get the biometric ID card details of their members? It is because they have access to the EC’s database, and that is why they producing the kinds of cards they are distributing to their members. We should be worried as Ghanaians,” Dr. Bawumia explained. Thirdly, Dr. Bawumia recounted the Supreme Court's ruling which barred the use of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) card from being used as one of the IDs for authenticating a voter's identity and eligibility. The ruling, according to Dr. Bawumia, meant that all registrations with the NHIS cards as contained in the voters’ register are illegal, unconstitutional and of no-effect. “There are, potentially, millions of people who used NHIS cards to register. Unless we go back to the use of the form 1A’s to verify and take out those who used NHIS cards to register, we can’t determine all those who used the NHIS card to register. It will be an arduous exercise, and that is why we need a new register,” he added.The fourth reason adduced by Dr. Bawumia was the statement made by the immediate past Chairman of the EC, Dr. Kwadwo Afari Gyan, who, after conducting the biometric registration exercise, announced to the general public that the provisional number of voters registered was a little less than thirteen million, and, that, after cleaning the provisional register and verifying same, it would publish the final number of registered voters. Surprisingly and contrary to legitimate expectations, according to Dr. Bawumia, when the EC announced the total number of registered voters, the number had inexplicably increased by over one million (1,000,000).“Till date, the EC has not been able to tell us who constituted the extra one million people. How will we be able to decipher who and who make up the extra 1 million? It is like trying to separate sugar from salt, after you have mixed them. You can’t do it, and that is why we need a new register,” he stressed.Dr. Bawumia’s final reason was the use of different registers for the presidential and parliamentary elections of 2016. He recalled that during the proceedings of the election petition, Dr. Afari Gyan was asked to explain why there was a difference of over 500,000 people. The former EC Chair attributed this difference in the presidential and parliamentary registers to “overseas registrations.”“In the Supreme Court, when we asked Dr. Afari Gyan to produce details of the 500,000 people whom he had registered abroad, he only provided 705 names, out of which we had 52 persons who had engaged in multiple registrations,” he explained.   These reasons, according to Dr. Bawumia, have so far been unchallenged by the NDC or any other stakeholder in the electoral process.The need for a new voters’ register, Dr. Bawumia noted, is not a strange phenomenon, citing examples of Togo, Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya and Nigeria, who all compiled new registers before the conduct of their elections.“Tanzania, before their election later this year, have compiled a new register. Kenya, even though they compiled a new register for their 2013 election, are compiling a new voters’ register for their next election. Nigeria’s previous voter register contained some 74 million names, but before this year’s election, a new register was compiled and the new total amounted to some 68 million people. A whopping 6 million ‘ghost names’ were removed. Likewise, in Cote d’Ivoire, they had a voter population of 8 million, and after compiling a new register for this year’s election, the total voter population is now about 6.8 million,” he explained.He continued, “Countries are employing technologies to ensure that they have a credible base for their democracy. That is what we are asking for in Ghana.”

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