EC re-lays Public Elections Amendment Regulations
The Electoral Commission (EC) last Tuesday re-laid the Public Elections (Registration of Voters) Amendment Regulation, 2020 from Parliament after the instrument was found to be fraught with errors and withdrawn.
It was re-laid after the EC had corrected the identified errors on the Constitutional Instrument (C.I.).
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The CI had earlier been withdrawn after the errors were identified but was re-laid the same Tuesday.
Background
The Majority Leader, Mr Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, who laid the instrument on behalf of the EC on March 16, 2020, pulled it out of the House after the detection of the defects by the Subsidiary Legislation Committee.
The committee considering the instrument had detected the existence of driver’s licence on the form two of the schedule of the instrument, contrary to the omission of driver’s licence in the new regulation.
The committee also found out a typographical error on the form one of the schedule.
The form one of the schedule as amended in Regulation 13 (c) contained the letter (e) instead of the letter (c).
EC failed
Giving details of the withdrawal of the instrument in an interview with the Daily Graphic, the Chairman of the Subsidiary Legislation Committee, Dr Dominic Ayine, said the committee noticed that the interpretation section of the instrument containing the definition of identity card was inconsistent with the amended regulation and, therefore, asked the EC to amend Regulation 32 that defined identity card.
He said the instrument basically sought to take out certain source documents that were currently in the C.I. 91 as proof of identification before one could be registered in the new voters register.
“It is taking voter registration card, birth certificate and driver’s licence as proof of identity, which means that a person who intends to register cannot use the voter ID card as proof of identity for the purposes of registration,” he explained.
According to him, although the new regulation showed that voter ID card, birth certificate and driver’s licence were no longer supposed to be source documents for purposes of registration, the EC failed to also amend the schedule forms that accompanied the new registration documents.
“If you look at someone who does not have the required source documents, for instance passport or the Ghana card, such a person needs another person duly registered to guarantee for them.
“The guarantee form has the required source documents so the EC needed to also amend the guarantee form in order to correspond with the new regulation 13 (c) which was not amended.
“That is why we asked the EC to go back and comprehensively amend not only the substantive regulation but also the schedules accompanying the regulation for the purposes of bringing it back to be re-laid,” he stated.
Reaction
Reacting to the concerns raised, Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu admitted the new instrument was withdrawn after the Subsidiary Legislation Committee pointed out another error in the instrument.
He acknowledged that while a driver’s licence was not going to be accepted as an evidence of identification, the committee made reference to the existence of driver’s licence in the form two of the schedule and called for the form two to be amended.
“When the form was being brought to the House, the EC should have taken the driver’s licence out,” he said.
Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu also said the form one of the schedule, as amended in Regulation 13 (c), contained what he described as a typo error.
“Clearly, this was a typo error. This is not an amendment for which the committee could have told the EC to correct the error, but the committee elected to tell the EC that it did not consider it a typo and asked the EC to go and correct it, leading to the withdrawal of the old C.I. and presenting a new one which was laid last Tuesday,” he stated.