The Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC), Jean Mensah, has been summoned to Parliament to brief the House of her plans for the 2020 election.
According to the summons timeline, she is to appear before the House next week.
Majority Leader, Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu, announced the summons on the Floor of the House today, while presenting the House’s business statement for next week.
The scheduling comes after the Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrissu demanded the appearance of the Chairperson to brief Parliament on how the Commission intends to conduct the 2020 election.
Mr. Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu who is also the Minister for Parliamentary Affairs urged the Minority to look forward to next week because the Commission has already been notified and apparently has returned with a positive response.
Already, the Minority has filed a Motion to have a Constitutional Instrument that the EC has presented for passage to govern the 2020 election to be rejected. It is the Minority’s view that the CI’s aim to exclude the existing Voters’ ID card from the list of documents that can be used to register onto a new voters register that the EC has vowed to compile, would disenfranchise many.
According to the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the Upper East and Upper West regions alone, hundreds of thousands of voters would be disenfranchised if the EC is allowed to push through its plans to proscribe the voters’ ID Card as an eligible document for registering onto the new voters’ register. The NDC’s Director of Elections, Elvis Afriyie Ankrah on Thursday explained that, “Only about 6.5 million people have access to the NIA card. The NIA could not dispute our claim that only 5.17 per cent and 6.36 per cent of the registrable population in the Upper West and Upper East regions, respectively, have been issued Ghana cards, as we speak.