Bereft Of Integrity

Dr Afari Gyan, EC Boss
The abolition of the National Health Insurance Card by the Supreme Court is significant and a landmark decision by the apex court.

That the health insurance card is no longer one of the acceptable documents for registering voters provokes further questions about the integrity of our electoral system.

While we are elated by the decision, we are unable to suppress the question as to whether the decision could have been otherwise; and had it been so what would have happened to the already stained integrity of the electoral register?

Even before reaching this milestone in our electoral history, many observers, including opposition elements, had cause to fret about why efforts were not being made to effect critical reforms in our voting system.

Nana Akufo-Addo re-echoed the concerns of the Supreme Court judges who adjudicated on the election petition hearing, when he sneered at the electoral system: there was consensus among the judges that reforms be effected in the electoral system.

Many months after the infamous verdict of the Supreme Court, the expected reforms are nowhere near being implemented by the EC which Chairman, Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, continues to exhibit hubris and outright disregard to good counsel.

Instructively, the said reforms were not considered before the seeming rush to register voters using especially a document which acquisition is open to foreigners. It is surprising that in spite of this glaring drawback, the Electoral Commission Chairman would insist on carrying out his project of allowing as many foreigners as the stock of the health insurance card would allow – the national security implications of the snag notwithstanding. But for the action of the Supreme Court, the EC Chairman, true to his character, would have ignored the sense in disallowing the health insurance card and hosted Togolese, Beninois and even Malians for the registration exercise.

How would the Chairman have felt seeing droves of Burkinabes or even Togolese clutching our health insurance cards lining up to be registered?

We are constrained to think that Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan hardly considers the national security interest of Ghana when performing his EC Chairmanship role. Resorting to cartoon-viewing when tension rules the country is something we would no longer countenance.

The ruling as it stands, paves the way for more demands towards eventually ensuring a clean electoral register. What is the fate of the electoral register when it is awash with names of hundreds even thousands of foreigners?

We would not be asking too much of the Supreme Court when we demand that the electoral register as it stands currently, be declared as flawed and therefore unworthy of being used as a credible catalogue of names of eligible voters.

The independence of the EC is balderdash when the integrity of their work falls below the standards of best practices: after all, the Commission is paid from the public purse. The electoral register must be cleaned and now, according to law not by the arbitrary standards of Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan.