Features
Ghana card should not cause unnecessary chaos in electoral process
Knowledge, experience, forthrightness, frankness, outspoken, straightforward and above all intelligence, are skills that are acquired through constant perseverance and, therefore are not commodities that can be bought in shops, supermarkets or from the open markets.
They are acquired through patience, experience, fortitude and hard work among other good traits such as generosity, integrity, loyalty, devotion, kindness, sincerity and self- control.
IT PAYS TO LISTEN TO WISE COUNSELLING
This, therefore presupposes that, if persons who have over the years sacrificed their lives through toils, time, energy, experience, zealousness and intelligence to acquire these noble, enlightened and laudable skills, are not being selfish to themselves, but sharing, offering and giving pieces of practical advice and admonitions, aimed at unifying the citizens, ensuring absolute peace and moving this country forward in the right direction, all we need to do is to listen attentively with opened ears, weigh them, give them serious thoughts and apply them accordingly for the overall benefits and outcomes.
OPERATING WITHIN LAWS AND RULES
Ghana is a democratic country that operates strictly within a set of laws, rules, regulations, enshrined in our statute books and a Constitution crafted by eminent citizens in 1992 to direct and regulate our operations and our way of living.
Therefore, the 1992 Constitution document, serves as a Bible from which the country takes inspiration from and is governed. Our leaders are required to be guided by the provisions under the 1992 Constitution in all their undertakings for the overall benefit of our country. Going contrary to these provisions means you have violated the laws and, therefore ready to suffer the consequences, thereof.
There is this saying that, “Even in the animal kingdom, where stupidity is their main object, sense is applied.” This, therefore implies that, even in the animal kingdom, there are set of rules and regulations within which they operate.
In order to avoid or prevent potential chaos and other nasty incidents in our beautiful, peaceful and dear country we all cherish most which will eventually create a volatile and insecurity situation for ourselves in the future, we have to strictly conform and abide by the tenets of the 1992 Constitution which is our Holy Bible. Nothing should be done outside the laws we have set for ourselves, otherwise, posterity will never forgive us.
GHANA CARD AND RELATED CONTROVERSY
One particular issue that had for the past month been trending in the social media outlets and other traditional news sources in the country, is the ambition by the Electoral Commission (EC) to use the Ghana Card as the only source of document for the continuous voter registration in the country.
Last month, the EC placed before Parliament, a draft C.I. titled: Public Elections (Registration of Voters) Regulations 2021, which is expected to regulate continuous voter registration.
Per the new C.I, which would become law after 21 sitting days of Parliament, the EC is seeking to make the Ghana Card the sole form of identification for eligible voters who want to get unto the electoral roll. That C.I. has been referred to the Subsidiary Legislation Committee of Parliament of which by convention, it is chaired by a member of the Minority group.
The law requires that orders, rules or regulations made pursuant to provisions of the Constitution or Act of Parliament, must be laid before Parliament for 21 days before they come into force. Any such subsidiary legislation so laid are referred to the committee to determine whether it is in accordance with the general objectives of the Constitution or the Act pursuant to which it is being made.
PROTESTS FROM THE NDC AGAINST GHANA CARD
Even before the EC had laid the new C.I. before Parliament, the largest opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) party, had accused the EC of planning to compile a new voters register for the 2024 general election, with the Ghana Card as the only source of document.
The Minority Leader in Parliament, Haruna Iddrisu, said any move by the EC to compile a new voters register with Ghana Card solely as the mode of identification would not augur well for the country, especially when the EC had already expended huge sums of money to compile a new register which was used for the 2020 general election.
The EC debunked the assertion by the NDC and said the new C.I. was only meant to regulate continuous registration, with the Ghana Card as the source document. “WE are not compiling a new voters register. The one we compiled in 2020 is a credible one, a very good register, so we are not dispensing it,” the Director of Electoral Services of the EC, Dr. Serebour Quaicoe, told the media.
MINORITY INVITES EC TO EXPLAIN
It appears that when the new C.I. was laid in parliament for the first time, there were heated debates, with the minority asking the EC to come and explain the rationale for the use of the Ghana Card as the only source of document.
In the midst of this heated controversy, the former Chairman of the Electoral Commission, DR Kwadwo Afari Gyan, a distinguished long serving EC boss with 22 years of service between 1992 and 2015, most experienced, knowledgeable, well vexed in electoral issues in the country and beyond, has waded into this sensitive and crucial issue, asking the EC and for that matter, the government to reconsider the use of the Ghana Card as the only source document for the continuous registration of new voters, otherwise it can disenfranchise millions of qualified electorate.
According to him, with many Ghanaians finding it difficult to get their Ghana Cards, making it the only form of identification for voter registration, was against electoral inclusivity, fairness and justice.
AFARI GYAN SPEAKS OUT ON GHANA CARD USAGE
Hear this intelligent, outspoken, eloquent, straightforward and frankly speaking former E.C. Chairman of highest international repute; “Ghanaian citizens don’t lose their citizenship if they are 18 years or older, but do not have the Ghana Card. So, the moot question is: why make the Ghana card the only means of identification for purposes of establishing eligibility to register to vote?”
He alluded that the fact that the number of people with Ghana Cards included those below the voting age of 18, and juxtaposing that, with the Ghana Statistical Service’s projection that people age 18 years and above would hit 19.5 million in 2023, the potential for many people to be disenfranchised as a result of the use of the Ghana Card as the only source document for voter registration was high.
Dr. Afari Gyan advised the EC to take a careful look at its insistence on the Ghana Card because in spite of its crucial role in elections, the EC was not the decider of elections, but rather the electorate. The electorate are the kingmakers.
So, a basic responsibility of any electoral commission is to facilitate the realisation of the people’s right to register as voters, and not to obstruct that right by demanding for registration purposes, documents that are not easily accessible to the people,” he cautioned.
So far, the National Identification Authority (NIA) had issued out 15.7 million Ghana Cards to applicants out of the 16,969,034 it has registered for the cards.
AVOIDANCE AND PREVENTION OF POTENTIAL CHAOS
Yes, the former EC Chairman, has hit the nail right on the head with profound pieces of advice to the Electoral Commission, the various political parties and the government on the way forward and they have to listen with clear conscience and opened ears.
Let us face the truth and the fact that if we are interested in ensuring clean, peaceful, fair and credible election in the country, come 2024, then we must adhere to these wise counselling from no other person than our own accomplished electoral think tank who had seen it all and stands tall among his peers when it comes to organising elections in Ghana, Africa and beyond.
His exemplary leadership in the past must be emulated and strictly followed by the current crops of those at the helms of electoral process in our dear country. To be forewarned, is to be forearmed, says Francis Hooke in 1685. A word to the wise is enough!
By Charles Neequaye
Writer’s email:ataani2000@yahoo.com
Contact: 0277753946/0248933366
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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