Accra-Ghana, March 01, GNA – The Minority Caucus in Parliament, on Wednesday said the proposed Constitutional Instrument seeking to eliminate the guarantor system to prove one’s eligibility to be captured onto the voter’s register will deny millions of Ghanaians the chance to register.
“We hold the view that the time-tested guarantor system must be maintained in our voter registration process and this position is non-negotiable. Common sense should tell any objective mind that a source document for the Ghana Card must be a source document for the Voter ID Card and vice versa,” Dr Cassiel Ato Forson, Minority Leader said at a Press conference in Parliament House.
He said it was the Caucus’ opinion that the basis for the move was unjustifiable.
Dubbed: “The Minority’s Opposition to the Electoral Commission’s Proposed Constitutional Instrument (CI) for Voter Registration”, Dr Forson said: “For emphasis, the Electoral Commission was pushed to provide evidence to back the claim of so-called abuse of the guarantor system, the EC indicated that in the 2019 voter registration for instance, only 15,474 people, representing just 0.09 per cent of the total of 17,029,981 registered voters, were challenged based on the guarantor system.”
He told the Press that the statistic was insignificant and immaterial percentage to warrant a total abrogation of the guarantor system, particularly at a time many did not have the ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) Card (Ghana Card).
According to the Minority Leader, the National Identity Register Regulations 2012 (LI 2111), made room for the guarantor system when it came to acquiring a Ghana Card.
He, therefore, questioned what the Electoral Commission (EC) was seeking to fix by relying solely on the Ghana Card as a source document for the registration of voters when it intended to completely outlaw the guarantor system, which constituted about 40 per cent of Ghana Card registrations.
The draft CI Public Election (Registration Voters) Regulations, 2022 is what the EC is seeking to lay before Parliament to make the Ghana Card the sole identification document for voter registration.
