Kofi Bentil, an attorney and senior vice president of IMANI-Africa, claims that many Ghanaians would lose their right to vote as a result of the Electoral Commission’s (EC) actions during the current voter registration process.
He contends that the EC has the resources and is constitutionally required to expand and carry out particular programmes.
The Electoral Commissioners’ seats could be terminated if there is any divergence from this constitutional obligation, according to Mr. Bentil.
Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile on Saturday, Mr. Bentil made it clear that the problem goes beyond simply abdicating responsibility; it also involves purposefully impeding people’s ability to register.
“In omission and commission, it’s not just a matter of omitting, like they are not doing anything, the suggestion is that there will be issues with people exercising their rights to register,”
He contends that the EC’s primary goal is to remove barriers and streamline the voter registration process, thus they ought to proactively put policies into place to improve the process.
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“The EC was established to eliminate these issues, open up the road, and establish circumstances that will enable people to register. Therefore, he continued, people ought to act and conduct acts that will increase registration.
Mr. Bentil insisted that “in this case, if you are not doing it at all, then you are failing to do your job but as far as I’m mindful of they are actually taking steps, conducting measures to preventpeople from enrolling which is directly outside what they are obligated to do.”
He condemned the use of public funds to defeat the goals of public policy, adding, “We should all be mindful when we do some of these things.”
Following the EC’s announcement that the voter registration process would only be conducted in its district offices around the nation, the vice president of IMANI-Africa made the statement.
Nevertheless, not many political parties have endorsed this choice.
On September 7, the EC was sued by the National Democratic Congress and four other political parties over its insistence on holding the 2023 limited voter registration exercise at its district offices.
The Convention People’s Party, All People’s Congress, Liberal Party of Ghana, and Great Consolidated Popular Party all joined the lawsuit, claiming that the ruling will deny voting rights to many qualified citizens.
In order to stop the electoral administration body from conducting the election until the core issue has been resolved, they seek the Supreme Court to intervene.
