Shame!!

Tuesday at the Supreme Court in the Abu Ramadan & Evans Nimako vs EC and A-G case, two faces that were always present in court were conspicuously missing: Amadu Sulley and Georgina Opoku Amankwa.

It was as if they were deliberately asked to stay away for fear that the bench would call them up to explain why they told the lawyers of the plaintiffs on March 30 in tape-recorded meeting at the EC headquarters that there was no way the EC could identify those who registered using NHIS cards in 2012 and two weeks later told a different story to the court.

It was this blatant lie to the court that influenced the specific orders last Thursday that the Commission should present a full list of those who registered using NHIS in 2012 to the court.

As it happened, out of the 14,031,793 names that got on the new biometric register of 2012, the EC wanted the court to believe that only 0.4% or 56,772 used the NHIS cards.

The NHIS in 2012 had registered a total of 8,885,757 active members. The EC list meant that only 0.6% of them registered using their NHIS cards.
On the list presented by the EC, it had only two people having used NHIS cards to register in Hohoe. However, on Monday, an NGO there brought out a list of 51 people they had identified in just a couple of days from one electoral area in Hohoe alone.

Mrs Charlotte Osei and her Commission, essentially, had brought a list designed to deceive the court and country.

The court saw through it but said they were restrained by the matter before them, which was just to seek clarification of their May 5 ruling. So they gave new orders clarifying the ruling.

They said as follows:

1. The 1st Defendant/Respondent is hereby ordered to take steps forthwith to implement this court's decision of 5th May 2016 in the terms clarified.
2. For the avoidance of doubt, the 1st Defendant / Respondent is hereby ordered forthwith to take all the necessary steps to delete from the current register of voters the list of persons whose names were submitted to this court on 29th June 2016 as persons who registered with the NHIS Card.

3. Further to the above order (2) the 1st Defendant / Respondent is further ordered to delete from the current register of voters the names of persons not included in the list submitted to this court on 29th June 2016 but who are also found to have registered with NHIS Cards.

The Supreme Court ruling on Tuesday achieved one thing, according to one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, which is that Ghanaians should not put all their trust in the Electoral Commission leadership, as currently constituted, to deliver a free and fair election.

That they appear willing to go to any lengths, including misleading the Supreme Court, to protect a register that everyone knows is bloated.
Speaking exclusively to the Daily Statesman, Abu Jinapor said the good news is that no matter whatever schemes some people in the EC and their "political masters" may have in mind, the overwhelming desire of the people for change in 2016 should triumph.

He has therefore called on the New Patriotic Party and all opposition parties "to focus on the quality of the people you recruit as polling and counting agents."

To him, it should not be assumed that all electoral officers up and down the country share the wishes of their bosses in Accra.

"It may not even mean that all those in Accra are of the same persuasion. What is clear is that the EC leadership is even prepared to not only mislead the apex court of the land but to interpret its judgment with the unethical view to frustrate the execution of it."
In allowing Abu Ramadan & Evans Nimako's application for clarification to succeed, the court made it clear that the EC had lied to it. The Court lambasted the EC for not complying with its order that the Commission goes ahead to delete those names immediately.

Two victories the plaintiffs got Tuesday are as follows: 1. The Court said its orders did not direct the EC to rely on CI 91 and the challenge procedure during exhibition to delete list of those who registered using NHIS cards. So the EC was wrong to say it was going to rely on a system that has not worked in the past to delete those names.

2. The Court did not accept the list presented by the EC as the full list. EC presented 76,772 names, the actual count was even less. The EC list means not more than 0.4% of people registered in 2012 with NHIS.

This breaks down as follows: in Upper West only 253 or 0.069% registered with NHIS; Upper East 193 (0.034%); Northern 301 (0.023%); Brong Ahafo 8,313 (0.667%); Ashanti 7,100 (0.277%); Western 2,311 (0.162%); Central 14,490 (1.176%); Greater Accra 17,563 (0.628%); and Volta 3,884 (0.335%.

The whole case Tuesday was about the fact that EC lied to the Court on April 12 that it did not have the list on its database but at the districts on the registrations forms (Form 1A) used. But that is not true because everything on Form 1A is entered onto the EC database as Form 1C, which is printed and the bottom torn for you to laminate to make your voter ID card and the other part given to the registrant as receipt.

The EC trained its own agents not to put NHIS card numbers on the Form 1A. So, those who put it there did not follow instructions: that was why only 56,772 did.