EC, parties reach consensus

THE major political parties in the country have arrived at a consensus on the way forward for the processes leading to the use of a biometric register for the 2012 elections.

Consequently, they have agreed to constitute two committees made up of members of the political parties with representation in Parliament to work in collaboration with the Electoral Commission (EC) to iron out other technical and legal challenges of the biometric system.

The Technical Committee will work on outstanding issues relating to the biometric system, particularly the verification of the process, data, software, among other things, while the Legal Committee will collaborate with the EC in drafting a new Constitutional Instrument (CI) to replace the current one, CI12, which is the Public Elections (Regulations of Voters Registration 1995).

These were arrived at during an Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting convened by the EC in Accra yesterday.

On the issue of the creation of new constituencies, the EC informed the forum, which the Daily Graphic learnt had been conducted in a cordial atmosphere, that it had hit a snag because, first, the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) had not produced the details of the 2010 Population Census which would form the basis for the demarcation of the constituencies.

Second, the government had also not made its intentions clear on creating additional districts, it noted, pointing out that the EC could not create any new constituency while new districts had not been created.

The EC also noted that it had been hauled before the court of law regarding the creation of new constituencies.

The only dissenting voice was that of the General Secretary of the People’s National Convention (PNC), Mr Bernard Mornah, who walked out of the forum, indicating that from the explanation given by the Chairman of the EC, Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, the EC had already taken the decision to create 20 constituencies without waiting for the GSS to release the needed figures.

“The EC has already made up its mind to create 20 new constituencies without the census figures from the GSS and also without the blessing of Parliament,” he told the media after walking out.

The IPAC forum was attended by representatives of political parties, including the National Democratic Congress (NDC), the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the PNC, the Convention People’s Party (CPP) and the Democratic Freedom Party (DFP).

The General Secretaries of the NDC, the NPP and the CPP, Messrs Johnson Asiedu-Nketiah, Kwadwo Owusu-Afriyie and Ivor Kobina Greenstreet, respectively, told the Daily Graphic that they were satisfied with developments so far but noted that if the EC had organised the forum earlier, as had been requested by almost all the political parties, the tension and misunderstanding would not have arisen.

The three parties also made it clear that they did not have any intention of interfering with the EC’s procurement process, nor were they interested in who was selected to supply the equipment for the biometric system.

They, however, said as major stakeholders, theirs was to ensure that their concerns were addressed for the country to have a register that had credibility and integrity and would be able to prevent double registration.

Reacting to the EC’s hesitation in creating new constituencies, Mr Asiedu-Nketiah gave the assurance that the NDC would impress upon the government to expedite action on its decision to create new districts to pave the way for the EC to create new constituencies.

Mr Owusu-Afriyie noted that the NPP had earlier raised concerns over the biometric process because it wanted to ensure that in the final analysis the people of Ghana would have a credible register that would assist in ensuring that every eligible voter’s ballot would be counted and that those who wanted to either vote more than once or impersonate would not have a field day.