“Neither reasonably credible nor accurate” is the key phrase here

I am enthused by the decision of Dr. Raymond Atuguba, a relative of Supreme Court’s Justice William Atuguba and former Executive Chief of Staff to President John Dramani Mahama, to weigh in on the raging controversy on the Ramadan-Nimako Decision recently handed down by the Apex Court for the key operatives of the Electoral Commission (EC) to “credibly decontaminate” the current National Voters’ Register (NVR). It was only a matter of time before citizens known to be heavily invested in the continuous preservation of the presently “unacceptably contaminated” or “criminally fraudulent” National Voters’ Register emerged from the proverbial woodwork” (“SC Didn’t Order Automatic Deletion of NHIS Carders – Raymond Atuguba” MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 5/28/16).

Not surprisingly, Dr. Atuguba has decided to cynically appropriate ratiocinative sophistry to vacuously defend the patently indefensible. He has also impudently, as well as imprudently, elected to defend the absolutely untenable because the University of Ghana Law School senior lecturer has been a prime beneficiary of the current voter’s register, which even the Apex Court which curiously permitted President Mahama and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to literally get away with epic political murder, in the landmark matter of the 2012 Presidential-Election Petition, has categorically observed to be “neither reasonably credible nor accurate.”

We must also quickly point out that the foregoing Supreme Court pronouncement is a very far cry from Mr. Jon Benjamin’s all-too-predictable and patently pedestrian observation that “In fact, 99% of all [voters’] registers all over the world are not accurate.” Well, for those of our readers who may not have heard of his name, Mr. Benjamin is the remarkably sanguine and delectably progressive British High Commissioner (or Ambassador) to Ghana. Needless to say, what those among the most vocal contributors to the raging debate on the current National Voters’ Register who have generously benefited from such scandalous illegality, at least as unmistakably affirmed by the Supreme Court, conveniently either fail or flatly refuse to take into account is the Apex Court’s indisputably categorical pronouncement that the current National Voters’ Register is “Neither reasonably credible nor reasonably accurate.”

What the foregoing clearly means is that while like all realistic and reasonable humans, such as Mr. Benjamin, each and every one of the justices of the Supreme Court who deliberated on the Ramadan-Nimako Petition are unreservedly agreed on the practical impossibility of achieving a perfect or impeccable National Voters’ Register, nevertheless, the quality and credibility of the current NVR leaves unreasonably too much to be desired. In other words, the level of inaccuracy or credibility of Ghana’s current NVR cannot be expected to deliver a fair representation or a fairly accurate picture of the democratic will of the people vis-à-vis their quadrennial choice of President. It is also reasonable to assume that pretty much the same situation prevails at the local or parliamentary level.

Already, Justice Jones Dotse, a bona fide occupant of Ghana’s highest court has categorically and publicly stated that, indeed, he and his colleague Associate Justices of the Apex Court have ordered the summary expurgation of the names of all Ghanaians who registered to vote in the 2012 presidential election by the use of the National Health Insurance Scheme’s ID Cards. But that is not the very end of the Apex Court’s pronouncement. The order goes on to say that any of the disqualified voters who have in their possession any one of the documents presently recognized by the court as constituting an authentic proof of one’s citizenship may go back to any of the Electoral Commission’s officially designated voter registration centers to have their names legally restored to the NVR.

Well about the only legitimate conclusion that any fair-minded observer can reach here is that National Democratic Congress’ stalwarts like Dr. Raymond Atuguba are so hell-bent on rigging their way back to power that any judicial pronouncement short of the blind and unreserved endorsement of the current NVR does not cut ice, as Virginia Woolf, the globally renowned British thinker, novelist and essayist once put it.

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