Ghana: Supreme Court ruling on register ‘not bold enough’ – IMANI boss

Franklin Cudjoe, the Executive Director of IMANI Ghana, has described the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on the voters’ register disagreements as not futuristic and serious enough. Ghana's Supreme court on Thursday described the nation’s electoral register as “reasonably inaccurate” and asked the Electoral Commission (EC), to clean the register, barely six months to a major presidential and parliamentary elections in November. As part of the cleaning exercise, the Commission has been asked to remove names of dead persons and expunge the names of persons who registered and voted in the 2012 elections using the National Health Insurance card as a proof of identity.

The court however did not give a specific timeline for the implementation of the ruling. The judgement follows a case brought before it by a former National Youth Organizer of the People’s National Convention (PNC), Abu Ramadan and one Evans Nimako, who were challenging the credibility of the voters’ register.

Mr. Cudjoe speaking on Citi FM’s news analysis programme, said he finds the court’s ruling a “bit baffling” since it failed to grant the plaintiffs more reliefs including fixing Ghana’s ID system than what they sought for. “Giving the circumstances surrounding this whole idea of the conflict over whether the register is credible or not, I found that ruling and the reliefs given not bold enough.

Maybe the Supreme Court may not go ahead and suggest that fix your ID system because you did not take it to court but that is where we depart. In other jurisdictions, the judges have been on record for saying things, or making recommendations actually way beyond what people will ask for.”

 “If you look at the ruling that Citizen Ghana got, they got more reliefs than what they actually asked for. You could tell that the judge was an advocate of freedom essentially. He was interested in the principles of democracy, good governance, and transparency so he went beyond. Inasmuch as I agree that the Supreme Court needs to be setting rules and possibly help us resolve conflicts, I think this is one ruling that I find not futuristic and not serious. “

Meanwhile, the Deputy Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs, George Loh, who was speaking on the same platform indicated that Ghana would have to bolster its national identification system in order for the country to have a more credible electoral register. He argued that a system to provide Ghanaians with genuine national identification cards is needed to ensure credible entries into the voters’ register.