But Credible Voters’ Register Exists in Every Functional Democracy

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Dec. 27, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]

He is quite accurate to assert that there is no foolproof voters’ register anywhere in the world. This does not, however, necessarily translate into our current voters’ register’s being amenable to any level of auditing that would make it functionally credible and acceptable, as evidence presented by Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia and his team of forensic experts from the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) has convincingly indicated (See “There is No Perfect Voters’ Register Anywhere – Prof. Dumor” Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 11/10/15).

Still, the former Director of the National Identification Authority (NIA), Prof. Ernest Dumor, has a point vis-à-vis the need to open up the current National Voters’ Register (NVR) for exhibition, or inspection, in the lead-up to Election 2016, so as to allow for the correction of any of the significant anomalies that may be found to have seriously compromised the NVR as it presently exists. Of course, this would necessitate the working out of the modalities for doing so to the satisfaction of all the major players involved. Such modalities may include the duration over which the Voters’ Register is made available for either the inspection of the general public, or legitimately accredited representatives of the relevant political parties.

By “relevant political parties,” of course, I am referring to parties with parliamentary representation of at least one seat, including independent candidates. I have also argued in the recent past about the need to punitively sanction any staff members of the Electoral Commission (EC) and political parties who may be found to have criminally participated in the serious contamination or compromising of the current NVR. This, I strongly believe, is about the most effective way of ensuring that the integrity of our NVR would be guaranteed in the foreseeable future.

Prof. Dumor also raises the equally significant question of the credibility of the EC, but the former staff member of the Electoral Commission does not specify precisely what he means when he observes that the EC needs to elevate its image and integrity to the level of the latter qualities with which it was supposedly routinely associated in 1993. Still, one can readily surmise that the allegedly considerable loss of credibility by the EC has in no small measure to do with the serious compromising of the current National Voters’ Register. If this speculative assessment has validity, then there is something unmistakably quizzical and even downright grotesque here, being that it was the same person, Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, who was Chairman of the EC in 1993 when, even as Prof. Dumor confidently claims, the credibility of the EC was at its apogee.

And so now, the question that needs to be pointedly asked is the following: precisely what happened between 1993 and 2012, a polar span of some twenty years, to significantly regress the otherwise salutary onward march towards the enviable development of Ghanaian democracy? We must also not lose sight of the fact that, for instance, as early as 1992, in the very first election marking the very beginning of the country’s 4th Republic, the Adu-Boahen-led New Patriotic Party was already impugning the credibility of the country’s electoral system and, in effect, the credibility of the Afari-Gyan-headed Electoral Commission. Which pretty much contradicts Prof. Dumor’s rather smug assertion that by 1993, the EC was enjoying the height of its credibility.

By Election 2000, some seven or eight years later, depending on who is doing the count, it would be the Atta-Mills-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) that would be calling the credibility of the EC into question. What this, of course, tells the avid student of Ghanaian politics is that the definition of “credibility,” when it comes to the conduct and acceptability of elections in Ghana, is relative to whoever wins or loses an election.