NDC's GARGANTUAN PLOT TO RIG THE BIOMETRIC REGISTRATION EXERCISE

It has come to the notice of the NPP that the NDC government led by Prof. J.E .A Mills has prepared a grand scheme designed to rig the up-coming December elections with the connivance of officials of the National Health Insurance Authority, and the National Identification Authority.

Over the weekend the managers of the National Health Insurance Scheme across the country were summoned to emergency meetings in the Regions to set up special registration centers in their scheme areas to register “certain people” from with immediate effect. These Centers are listed below:

Regions and their Selected Schemes:

NHIS officials have been instructed to complete the exercise within 2 weeks and regional managers have up to 3rd April 2012 to submit the batches for card printing.

They have code-named the exercise a “Special Registration Exercise”.

The questions we wish to ask are:
1. What are they issuing these cards for, knowing full well that the EC voter registration is due to start this coming Saturday 24th March?

2. We are aware that NHIS registration/card issuance usually takes 3 months, so why and how is this “Special Registration Exercise” being conducted within a week, and just before the start of national voter registration?

3. What is the motivation behind this so-called “Special Registration Exercise” in which NHIA intends to charge people a reduced fee of GHC 15.00 whereas the standard fee for NHIS registration is GHC23.00?

4. If it's a normal exercise done at the scheme manager's discretion, how come it is being done at the same time across the country?
5. Why are Central and Western regions exempted from the exercise?
6. Why are there 13 Schemes in the Volta region alone and only three each in the Ashanti region and Eastern?

The NPP would like to caution those behind this purportedly gargantuan attempt to defraud Ghanaians in the run up to the EC Biometric Voter Registration exercise that as per the IPAC agreement, NHIS cards will not count towards Biometric Registration eligibility for identification in the voter registration exercise. NPP states further that we will not allow these cards to be used as identification in the voter registration exercise and accordingly advise our agents and supporters to take note of this.

We therefore demand that the Electoral Commission must disallow the use of NHIS cards, as evidence of identification for Biometric registration.

We in the New Patriotic Party have raised these issues because we are aware that the Mills/Mahama NDC government is desperately trying to find ways to rig the December 2012 elections. This assertion was articulated last Saturday by the former first lady, Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings when she revealed that Prof. Mills used non-eligible delegates to rig the NDC Presidential Primaries held in Sunyani.

Prof. Mills, knowing very well that he has not performed to the satisfaction of the people of Ghana, is desperately employing the same rigging device towards the up-coming National Elections, and we in the NPP would like to warn Ghanaians and all those who cherish our fledgling democracy to remain vigilant to any attempt to derail our path towards deepening Ghana's democracy.

….Signed…..
Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie
(General Secretary)