By Edzorna Francis Mensah
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has deferred the petition to Parliament on the new Constitutional Instrument: Public Elections (Registration of Voters) Instrument for the conduct of the 2024 Parliamentary and Presidential elections for further consultations.
The petition, which stands in the name of the Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, and advertised on the Order Paper for Tuesday, November 1, stated that the proposed Public Elections (Registration of Voters) Instrument (C.1.) should not be laid until the backlog of Ghana Cards, which the National Identification Authority has admitted to, has been cleared.
The content of the petition further said, “since proposed Public Elections (Registration of Voters) Instrument (C.I.), as a subsidiary legislation cannot override the substantive provision in the Constitution on the citizens’ right to register and to vote, and insistence on the Ghana Card as the only evidence of citizenship, will deny millions of citizens the right to register and to vote, other forms of evidence of citizenship such as Ghanaian passport and the guarantor system must be added to the Ghana Card as evidence of citizenship in the proposed Constitutional Instrument (C.I.).”
According to NDC, further action on the proposed C.I. by or in Parliament should be frozen until consultations have been initiated and concluded with the major stakeholders, especially the political parties, including the NDC, and civil society.