Asantehene Leads Crusade for a Credible Voter Register in Ghana

Otumfuo Osei Tutu II - Asantehene

            “I know how concerned our friends in the international community are about the sustenance of democracy through elections that are credible; and I have no doubt they will find it of greater value to help fund a more credible process that delivers a fair and just result than to pay for the unpredictable consequences of flawed elections. So we should ask ourselves now: Is our electoral register tainted? If it is, how best can we clean it to give the register credibility? If we are seeking the ultimate fairness, we must seek first the ultimate credibility,” said Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II at the annual Ghana Bar Association (GBA) conference in Kumasi.

The conference was held under the theme: “Rule of Law, Access to Justice and Sustainable Development – The Panacea to Political and Economic Progress of a Nation State.” Otumfuo’s straight talk attracted rapturous applause from the legal luminaries that had gathered at the Great Hall of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).
Leading the crusade for a credible voter register, Otumfuo said that cost should not be a hindrance to the compilation of a new voters register. He was not happy about GBA’s loud silence on contentious issues in the country, including the credibility of the electoral register ahead of the 2016 general elections.
 The Asantehene said the forthcoming elections could be the most challenging in the nation’s constitutional development after the landmark legal tussle which followed the 2012 elections, and that “The world will expect that all the lessons have been learnt, all the loopholes have been identified and we should therefore have a reasonably error free, truly free and fair polls.” There has been disagreement on whether a new voter register should be compiled.
While the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the other opposition parties have been vociferous on the need for a replacement of the current register to guarantee credible, free and fair elections, the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) has been dismissive of the calls, describing them as absurd and without basis. The NPP recently claimed the party’s 10% investigation had uncovered more than 76,000 people with the same names and pictures on Ghana and Togo’s electoral rolls – a development which makes the nation’s electoral roll incredible for free and fair elections.