The Chairman of the UK/ Ireland branch of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) has called for a second look at the country’s laws on enfranchising Ghanaians in the diaspora to ensure they are able to actively participate in the country’s decision making process. Speaking on Multi TV’s political talk show, Minority Caucus, Hayford Atta-Krufi indicated that many Ghanaians in the diaspora are frustrated about their inability to participate fully in the political process back home in Ghana. “There is a sense of frustration in that we have to commit to come over for every purpose, for every conference, like this registration, I am here for the registration and in December I will have to come back to vote and many Ghanaians obviously feel that a lot could have been done in terms of enfranchising Ghanaians” Mr. Atta-Krufi said. He noted that since there are Ghanaians in every part of the globe, “it’s one of our pet plea that if the laws of the country could be looked at again in such a way that the human resource that Ghana has around the world could be tapped and therefore franchise given to people to be able to register and vote from their respective countries because really, the infrastructure is there”. “Every Ghanaian that travels abroad would have to travel on a Ghana passport so really and truly if we strengthen the criteria for getting a Ghana passport so that maybe foreigners do not take advantage of it, and we are able to make sure that only Ghanaians get Ghana passport, wherever we are, that could be our evidence, our proof of id to be able to register and vote and that I think is much easier” he added. Mr. Atta-Krufi also called for the operationalization of the ROPA law indicating “I think the last point of it was that the Electoral Commission did not have the resources to travel the world, so I think it comes down to that point and if now we’re beginning to look at biometric registration which they didn’t think was even operational, then maybe we can push the agenda a little bit forward and now that we have biometric registration and the government is committing itself to ensuring that the voter’s register is credible then this is the time for us also to also begin to make a voice so that Ghanaians abroad would be given the opportunity to register and perhaps vote in future elections”.