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What next, the  Voters Register?
A credible voters’ register is a prerequisite for orderly and peaceful elections

What next, the Voters Register?

 

Yes, we are getting to the end of this year and the beginning of the next. The most important thing that will happen at the beginning of next year is the inauguration of President-elect Akufo-Addo and his government and the swearing-in of a new Parliament with a healthy majority for the party of our new President.

We can expect many things to be done differently from that of the outgoing government of President John Mahama. If not for nothing at all, these are two very different persons with naturally differing perspectives on our country and its political direction, reinforced by the obvious fact of ideological differences. It is thus worth my while to spend today speculating on what exactly is in store for us as a people from the presidency and government of President Akufo-Addo.

I believe that to be a more useful educational approach to understanding our society than the current craze parroting the whys and whose of the various reasons why President Mahama and his National Democratic Congress (NDC) lost so emphatically the general election.

Reasons for election outcome

I have already indicated my disinclination to accept given reasons until better particulars come in. That was two epistles ago. Why do I say so? None of the proffered reasons offer significant insights into the reasons for the victory of the NPP and the defeat of the NDC. None of the reasons being given for either position differs much from the reasons that were provided to explain matters when we changed governments in the years 2000 and 2008.

It would be a stretch of credulity to believe the same reasons provided for the effects of previous elections must necessarily apply to this too, as if all similar events are similar in cause and effect. Either the people of Ghana are not that sophisticated, or we are being shamelessly fed on mere propaganda by clever people who seek to hide the truth. I don’t believe this to be the case.

My interest today is different. The one thing we are going to see in this new government is a new voters register to replace the biometric register used for the 2012 and 2016 elections, which produced different results. It is a ritual in this country to have the register renewed or changed after every two elections, and a new register on the way can be defended on this ground alone. Except that this would not be the reason offered, I assert.

A whole slew of worn and banal arguments about the register being bloated, etcetera, would be marshaled to create the political justification for a new register, notwithstanding the salutary fact that its use in two previous elections have produced different results. My objection to a new register is two-fold: Because what we have now is a biometric register and nobody’s fingerprints are going to change when a new one is compiled. My other reason is that our elections are becoming unbearably too expensive to operate, as if that is all we do in this country, when we know and appreciate the financial challenges of our development agenda.

I will suggest an IPAC meeting to agree a permanent system for the removal of the unqualified and registration of new voters without the hassle of getting an entirely new register, with arguments proffered only to raise unnecessarily the political temperature for reasons which now seem quaint after the elections.

Our politics

The politics we shamelessly do in this country over the voters register always threaten the unity and stability of this country. At the material time, some of us do not seem to mind. We shall not always be lucky. If a register we are against can fetch us victory at the polls, then the whole bag of the arguments and quarrels we revel in to agitate for a new one are completely misconceived and deliberately unhealthy for our sense of nation, and dangerously so. Partisans on either side will arise who will advocate a new one to enable them register minors and aliens, if we are to believe their analyses.

However, our real experience has shown that the truth is no ally of partisan considerations, else the NPP would never have come to power with a register compiled in an NDC administration and vice versa. If NPP partisans are getting ready to bloat the Ashanti register when we get to changing the current one, I should counsel them that that is no guarantee of victory at the polls, as 2008 emphatically showed. Indeed, and worse, the 2012 biometric register was a brainchild of the opposition NPP, but it did not give them victory, neither at the polling station or in court.

A democracy, I agree perfectly, must renew itself all the time with robust discussion of both the lofty and the inane, and implementation of popular ideas, and getting an agreeable voters register is one such idea critical to our enjoyment of democracy. However, we can also threaten its enjoyment by concentrating on side quarrels which have proven over the years to be mere distraction.

Just recall the tonnes of ink spent writing on the threat of people who registered with their national health insurance card, by some of our fine minds, and the present landscape after the elections. It seems so far away and quaint, and ultimately irrelevant to anything. There are so many things happening at the moment regarding the transition to the presidential and parliamentary inaugurations, new ministers and the whole lot of seemingly exciting, but temporal news floating in the air.

I daresay that a new voters register, its justifications and cost would have far more impact on us than all the above. We shall also be affected needlessly in our national stability, an eventuality we must seek to avoid.

 

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