The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has filed for Judicial Review in the matter of the Eelectoral Commission’s compilation of a new voters register.
A release from the party this evening, signed by its National Communications Officer, Sammy Gyamfi, informed the public that the party which has openly disagreed with the Supreme Court’s judgment, wants the apex court to reconsider its own judgment in respect of two specific issues.
”We take a critical view of the holding of the Supreme Court that our birth certificates are worthless as proof of our identity, and thereby, our nationality. As our lawyers have stated in their arguments in the review application; “…….Registering births and deaths has been a basic element in official national record keeping for decades. The certificates resulting from these registers are well known and, with respect to the birth certificate in particular, its relevance for public purposes such as obtaining a passport is very well established. Indeed, it is not only in Ghana that this is the case. Throughout the world, the keeping of official records of birth and the use of the resulting birth certificate for public purposes is well established.””
“A Ghanaian birth certificate shows one’s date and place of birth, age, parentage, and nationality; précisely the kind of information that would be required for any form of voter registration.
“Our lawyers have also pointed out that “Because the connecting factors relevant to determination of nationality are primarily place of birth and parentage, birth certificates are definitely evidence of great importance for citizenship determination.”
”This is particularly so, as the Parliament of the Republic of Ghana has enacted a law, National Identity Register (Amendment) Act, 2017, Act 950, which affirms the efficacy of a birth certificate as an identification document that proves citizenship. We therefore find it surprising and worrying, that the Supreme Court would hold that “A birth certificate is not a form of identification”.
“The Supreme Court’s decision that holders of existing voter ID cards cannot use same as a source of identification, is also a matter of great concern to us as a political party. It is our view, that holders of existing voter ID cards have acquired rights based on the fact that the Electoral Commission have gone through a process of identifying them, ascertaining their ages and nationality and has adjudged them to be eligible to vote.
This data appears on the face of each voter ID card and in our view, should constitute prima facie identification of its holder for the purpose of any fresh voters’ registration exercise. What surprises us is that, it is the same Electoral Commission which issued these cards at high expense to the state, that is now alleging strenuously, with hardly any proof, that its own process of issuing those cards was so poisoned that those cards should not be accepted as proof of identity. This we maintain is arbitrary, whimsical and capricious.
“These exceptional circumstances, are what have necessitated the present application for the review of the judgment of the Supreme Court on this matter.” Wrote Sammy Gyamfi.
According to the party, its return to the court was not immediate because after the Supreme Court had given its oral judgment, it had taken some time before a written judgment followed.
As a political party, when the judgment was delivered, we did not hide our disappointment, but we were powerless to do anything about it at the time because the reasons for the judgment were not given until 15th July 2020, 20 days after the judgment was announced.
After that, our lawyers went to work; and true to our expectation, they have come back with a number of very cogent reasons why they think the judgment of the Supreme Court was wrong.
We have therefore placed our concerns before the Supreme Court for it to take a second look at its own judgment, and if possible, change its position on matters that we think are fundamental to citizenship and the right to vote in this country.
the controversial judgment that has left many confused was delivered by the Supreme Court on 25th June. In it the court, whose original jurisdiction had been invoked to compel the Electoral Commission to include the birth certificate and the existing voters register in the list of source documents for registration onto the new voters roll, ruled that the documents were illegitimate as sources of national identity.