The Ashanti Regional branch of opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) says it will visit a court action on Ghana’s electoral body if it refuses to extend the period for re-registration of deleted National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) registrants.

NPP Ashanti Regional Secretary, Sam Payne, says the Electoral Commission (EC)’s decision not to extend the re-registration period flies in the face of Supreme Court (SC)’s order asking it to take appropriate steps to re-register all deleted names.

“This exercise [re-registration of deleted NHIS registrants] is a matter of legality and when it is not done we are going to seek a legal redress,” he told Joy News.

Genesis:

Ghana’s electoral body unrolled the re-registration exercise of persons whose names were deleted in compliance with SC’s order on May 5 ordering all NHIS registrants who got on the voters’ register in 2012 be deleted.

It was a ruling in a case in which a former National Youth Organiser of the People’s National Convention (PNC), Abu Ramadan and Evans Nimako were challenging the EC over the credibility of the register.

The court ordered the deletion and re-registration of over 5,773 NHIS registrants before the December polls.

Total registrants at the end of exercise:

But in what has taken sections of the society aback, the ten-day exercise of the Commission was able to see at least 22,107 deleted NHIS registrants registering out of the staggering 56,000 names that were deleted.

Calls for extension:

Despite campaigns for extension of the exercise to enable enough names to get on the register, the Commission is stuck to its gun. It says it will not extend the period.

Director of Communications at the Commission, Eric Dzakpasu, says they did enough to disseminate the information about re-registration period.

According to him, if the people wanted to re-register, they could have done that within the 10-day period and not wait for an extension before doing so.

NPP stance:

However, the NPP remain unconvinced arguing excuses churned by the Commission are “lame” and should not be countenanced in the country.

Mr Payne says the Commission should have anticipated a low turnout since the exercise is running in tandem with the Voters’ Exhibition Exercise which ends on August 7.

He believes the decision to run the two exercises was an attempt by the Commission to confuse and disenfranchise Ghanaians.

He says the NPP will take the matter to court since the decision to fairly register all the deleted names came from it.

Meanwhile, the Member of Parliament for Efutu in the Central Region, Alexander Afenyo-Markin has also threatened to sue the Commission.