President of IMANI Ghana Franklin Cudjoe says the Supreme Court risks losing ‘considerable legitimacy’ if it rules out the voter’s ID card and birth certificate as proof of identity in the upcoming voter’s registration exercise.
The Electoral Commission maintains the two documents are not credible enough to be accepted as proof of identity in its upcoming mass registration exercise.
The Commission in its case against the National Democratic Congress (NDC) at the Supreme Court argues that: “In respect of the cards issued pursuant to ci 12, the 2nd Defendant (EC) has found that those voter identification cards were issued without any form of identification at all and its ineligibilities, breaches and excesses were imported into the 2012 register pursuant to CI 72 in breach of Article 42 and displacing the credibility of the CI 12 cards”.
The case is set for judgment on June 23.
However, in a post on Facebook, the IMANI boss said Ghana’s Democracy will suffer if the court accepts the position of the EC.
” Let us make no mistake about this, any court that rules that birth certificates and/or voter ID cards can be rejected for voting identification purposes shall immediately lose considerable legitimacy, dragging the Judiciary into this quagmire of democratic ruin.
“But should the courts restore the validity of those documents, after the EC has completed its worthless exercise of disenfranchising all current voters and re-registering them afresh for no sensible reason, the EC shall be forced to re-open registration, throwing the electoral calendar into an even worse mess than it currently is in”.
Source: Starrfm.com.gh