Voters Register Is Perfect; There Is No Need For A New One - Kofi Adams

National Organizer of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), Kofi Adams has disagreed with the move by the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP’s) quest of the Electoral Commission to organize new voters’ registration for the 2016 elections.

According to him, the move by NPP’s Chief Scribe, Kwabena Agyei Agyepong to call on the EC boss to compile a new voters’ register is unjustifiable if the reason is based on the Supreme Court’s ruling against the use of NHIS card for the registration.

Kofi Adams explained on Okay Fm’s "Ade Akye Abia" Morning Show that those who succeeded to use the NHIS card to go through the voters’ registration before the Supreme Court ruling against the card cannot be considered invalid registered voters.

He again expatiated that those people have already gone through the registration and therefore any attempt to call for new registration with the intention to defer them from registration is not possible since they will produce their new acquired voters’ ID for the fresh compilation.

“Some people are basing their call for new registration on the fact that Supreme Court ruling says EC should not register people eligible to vote with the NHIS card, therefore there should new registration, no!; those who succeeded to use the NHIS card to register before the SC ruling against it cannot be considered invalid,” he explained.

“They have gone through the registration already and so if you ask them to register again they will bring their new voters’ ID as it is one of the requirements to register for the new Voters’ ID. What therefore is the essence of the new registration if the intention is to stop those who used NHIS card to register for the earlier voters’ ID?”, he stressed.

Touching again on the Supreme Court ruling over the 2012 election petition, Kofi Adams insisted though there was a perception some minors found their way to register for the elections, it will be out of place to flash them out since they have already turned 18 years and eligible to vote.

With the Population Census statistics which does not tally with the voters’ register, Mr. Adams believe the census data maybe wrong due to wrong information probably given by the citizens during the census.

Meanwhile, the population of Ghana is about 26 million and out of this, about 56 per cent are eligible to vote and it is with this finding that the largest opposition NPP and the PPP and some political pundits have raised red flag against it for further probing.

But in the view of the NDC National Organizer, “everything is perfect with the register…if it is not broken, you don’t fix it; you only fix it when it is broken or if you didn’t fix it well”.

He substantiated his argument that the NPP and all other political parties were fully represented when the voters’ register was done; insisting the opposition parties could have raised the red flag during the registration and not when they all benefited from the voters’ register during the 2012 elections.