The Member of Parliament for Builsa South, Dr.Clement Abas Apaak, has asserted that his reading of Article 42 of the 1992 Constitution has indicated that the conduct by the Electoral Commission (EC) on the limited voter registration exercise is unconstitutional.
According to the lawmaker, the decision by the EC to restrict the limited voter registration to only its District and Municipal offices across the country is unlawful, unconstitutional and without basis.
“Anyone who has read Article 42, the right to vote, and you juxtapose that with what is going on, it is as though the EC is using our resources to work against the interests of the citizens”, he stated.
“The article is very clear, and what does it say? It says the right to vote; any Ghanaian of 18 years and above has the right and entitlement; it doesn’t just talk about the right; it says the entitlement to register for the purposes of participating in public elections and referenda, “he emphasised.
He revealed this when he spoke to Mark Smith on A1 Radio’s Daybreak Upper East show regarding the ongoing limited voter registration exercise.
The Member of Parliament elaborated further that Article 43 makes it clear that one of the goals of the Commission should be to undertake programmes and projects to expand the electoral role, which is to ensure that many people as possible are able to register to vote.
Given this interpretation, the lawmaker quizzed “So on what basis does the EC decide on the back of having organized IPAC meetings where all the parties that participated, including the NPP, except the NDC, have said that the preferable way to do this is to decentralize the process”.
He said that despite calls by civil society organizations, opinion leaders, ordinary Ghanaians, and political parties to the extent of going to court, the EC has simply ignored their concerns.
This, he noted, is to “constrain, discourage, and disenfranchise those young men and women who have the constitutional right to be on the electoral roll so that they can vote in both the coming District-level election and the 2024 election”.
Source:
A1radioonline.Com|101.1MHz|Gilbert Azeem Tiroog|Bolgatanga
