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The Minority in Parliament is kicking against what it terms, attempts by the Electoral Commission (EC) to compile a new voters’ register costing US$80 million using the new Ghana card as the sole primary identification.
Haruna Iddrisu addressed the press in Parliament a day ago and said: “Our understanding as we pick it up is that the EC is desperately planning to discard the 2020 voters register and replace it with a new voter register, which will cause taxpayers and the people of Ghana 80 million dollars thereabout.”
According to the Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, a new register on this basis is a wasteful expenditure and will disenfranchise a lot of Ghanaians who have not registered or secured their cards yet.
The Member of Parliament for Ningo Prampram, Sam George made similar allegations in the past, indicating that the EC is preparing to lay a Constitutional Instrument in Parliament that will allow the creation of new voters’ register with the Ghana Card.
The move by the Jean Mensa-led EC would be a slap in the face of Ghanaians because, in 2020, the electoral regulatory body had weathered intense public criticisms to compile a controversial new voters’ register, saying that register was meant to be the most credible Ghana has ever had.
The Ghanaian Parliament approved a budget of over GHS 390 million for the EC to conduct the voter registration exercise ahead of the 2020 national elections because the EC argued vehemently that the previous register which was biometrically compiled before the 2016 general elections was full of loopholes.
It is therefore unclear why the EC will need such an amount of money to compile another register in the run-up to the 2024 elections.
This has sparked worries that Jean Mensa and her commissioners were cooking yet another scheme to rig the 2024 elections for the incumbent New Patriotic Party (NPP) as was widely reported in 2020.