Minority in Parliament says Ghana’s Covid-19 case count will hit 100,000 in the next few months if the Electoral Commission (EC) is allowed to go ahead with plans to compile a new voter’s register.

The house, on June 9, gave the leeway for a new Constitutional Instrument (C.I.) backing the EC’s plan to compile the new voter’s register.

Making a case against the C.I, member of the Subsidiary Legislation Committee Magnus Amoatey argued the registration exercise will endanger the health of Ghanaians.

“When we had 400 cases of Covid-19, we were locked down. Today [Wednesday], we’re at almost 10,000 and we are asking the EC to go and gather 18 million Ghanaians to go and line up and write their names on a new register,” Amoatey said.

He further projected that: “I am sure and I am not speculating, that by the time we finish this registration – God forbid – we will record over 100,000 positive cases.”

But Majority Leader Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu says if the argument is allowed to hold, then the EC will also have no business organising the December 2020 elections either.

He quizzed whether “we should not have any election of 7th December? Because about the same 18 million will have to go queue and vote. If the argument is that 18 million or so people cannot queue today and register today, then on 7th December the same principle will hold.”

Questioning the rationale behind the NDC’s opposition to the new registration exercise, Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu opined that, “let them (Minority) move the motion now that there should not be any election and that the President of this country should continue as the President.”