18 CSOs kick against new voter register
The Coalition of Civil Society Organisations under the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC) is backing calls for the Electoral Commission to rescind its decision to compile a new voter register.
The issue of a new register has sparked massive controversy in the country with the NDC leading a coalition of opposition parties to demonstrate against it while the governing NPP is also rallying for it along with some other parties.
The parties against it have cited cost and timing concerns for their opposition.
Now they have support from 18 CSOs under the GACC, who believe the nation does not, in the face of the present facts, need to throw out everything and acquire a totally new infrastructure when the present system can be augmented and be made capable of performing the task.
Read the CSOs' recommendations:
RECOMMENDATIONS FROM 18 CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATION ON WHAT GHANA SHOULD DO ABOUT THIS NEW REGISTER DISAGREEMENT.
The EC should:
1. Open up the electoral register for voters to verify their names.
2. Update the existing software in ways to make it more efficient.
3. Remove names of persons suspected dead or who do not verify.
4. Work with the vendors to prime the hardware and where needed replace faulty ones.
5. Acquire new hardware to augment the existing stock and work with the existing systems. This is the more justified approach given time and resource considerations and indeed is the most technically feasible and defensible approach compared to totally replacing the entire system at great cost and running the nation through the trauma of another voter registration exercise.
We reject the EC’s informal, off the grapevine, costing of the alternatives to a full end-to-end replacement. We stand ready to debate the EC in any forum it prefers about its costing.
We need to bear in mind that the NIA has struggled to complete its exercise in 3 years, so the EC purporting to do this in less than 1 year suggests a very stressful time for everyone with no guarantees of success, but a definite requirement for huge resource expenditure.
As a nation, if there is need for collecting fresh data on citizens, the more appropriate, most lawful and financially responsible and justified approach will be to:
1. let the NIA (The legally mandated Authority for collecting national identification data) collect and process the information.
2. The NIA should then send the EC the subset of information it needs for the purpose of election. 3. The EC can then use that information to update its systems.
This way the nation moves forward and avoids the wasteful duplication of efforts at great expense
SIGNED:
Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC)
IMANI Africa
SEND Ghana
Africa Centre for International Law and Accountability (ACILA)
Financial Accountability and Transparency – Africa (FAT-Africa)
Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)
Youth Bridge Foundation West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI)
Citizens Movement against Corruption (CMaC)
Human Rights Advocacy Centre (HRAC)
Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI)
Women in Law and Development in Africa (WiLDAF)
Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG)
Parliamentary Network Africa (PNA)
ISODEC.
Source: classfmonline.com
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