Senior Vice President of IMANI Africa, Dr. Kofi Bentil, has berated the Electoral Commission (EC) for the current brouhaha surrounding the commission’s upcoming voter registration exercise for the 2024 election.
Dr. Bentil accused the EC of continuously breaking the laws of Ghana which he said puts Ghana at a high risk of a civil war.
Speaking in a JoyNews interview, the IMANI Vice President, who is a Lawyer, added that the EC continuously refuses to listen to major stakeholders in the electoral system of Ghana and does what it wants even if it is against the 1992 constitution of Ghana.
“We have an Electoral Commission which has become a pernicious institution. It refuses to do what is written in the law. It allocates to itself powers it does not have. It creates unnecessary costs and stress in this country.
“If you check for the past election cycles, almost every time we have a strange debate about registration, here we are again and it does not make any sense. The constitution says the EC should compile a register … it was made clear that the job of the Electoral Commission is to facilitate voting. Your (the EC’s) job is not to do things that will make people lose their right to vote.
“We have a situation where this electoral commission chooses not to listen to the law, not to listen to even the main parties … It (EC) just goes ahead to do what it wants to do – the EC is becoming a lawless institution. God has kept Ghana from a civil war. The EC is tempting faith,” he said.
Dr. Bentil made these remarks while reacting to the new C.I the EC has laid before parliament, which is seeking to use the Ghana Card only for voters’ registration.
The new CI which is titled Public Elections (Registration of Voters) Regulations, 2021, laid in Parliament, aims to continuously register Ghanaians who turn 18 using only the Ghana Card as the required document for the exercise.
Another key proposal in the bill is the creation of two voter registers, namely the electoral area register and the constituency register.