Audio By Carbonatix
Member of Parliament for Bawku Central Mahama Ayariga has made a passionate appeal for the Electoral Commission (EC) to reconsider pushing its Constitutional Instrument (CI).
The instrument will make the National Identification Card (Ghana Card) the sole document for registration of voters.
Speaking on JoyNews' Newsfile on Saturday, he said although the EC had suggested that the guarantor system was porous therefore needed to be checked, there were other ways to do so without scrapping the system.
He noted that the Ghana Card as the sole document required would disfranchise many eligible electorates.
Touching on alternative ways, he said, the minority side had suggested that the laws around the guarantor system could be tightened to meet the same robust nature of the National Identification Authority (NIA).
“If you say that the guaranteeing mechanism of NIA is more robust, can we just leave that and put in your laws so that you use the same guaranteeing mechanism,” he said.
The MP said that in the NIA system, a guarantor was also required to help complete the process hence he could not fathom why the EC would choose one over the other.
“Don’t close the doors on Ghanaians and say that they must use a Ghana Card because the reason you are running away from your system is because of the guaranteeing mechanism.
"However, the Ghana Card also employs the same mechanism in its process, so for me this should settle the debate,” he told host, Samson Lardi Anyenini.
Mr Ayariga is one of the many legislators who have made calls for the EC to halt on the CI.
However, EC Chair Jean Mensa addressing the Parliament indicated that it had expunge 40,000 people from the guarantor system.
In that regard, she insisted that Ghana Card was the way to go in order to check all these inadequacies.
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