New C.I: Your intentions good but timing wrong – Gyampo to EC

A Political Science Lecturer at the University of Ghana, Professor Ransford Gyampo has said though the reason for the Electoral Commission’s (EC) Constitutional Instrument (C.I) that seeks to make the Ghana Card the sole document for registration on the voter roll is a good initiative, the timing is wrong because the various political parties in the country are yet to reach a consensus on the issue.

The Political Science Lecturer is, therefore, appealing to the EC Chair Jean Mensa, to put a brake on the pedal.

“The EC is arguing that if this C.I is passed; it will allow them to do continuous voters registration at their district offices. The EC sits in Accra so they have no appreciation or understanding of the distance between the hinterland and the district offices.

“I think they don’t know,” he told Nana Otu Darko, on Dwabre Mu on CTV, Thursday, 2 March 2023.

He, however, blamed the lack of consensus among the various political parties in the country on mistrust for the institutions involved.

“One of the challenges of the current two main bodies involved is trust deficit, meaning people do not trust them.

“People do not trust them. This is because this week all of a sudden, though we have been in this country, and people are suffering for instance, today if you have your money at Databank, and you want to go for it, they say mark to market value, then government just makes a cut on it. It happened to me personally, same as my money at ECOBANK.

“A country which is yet to pay bondholders their accrued interest, in a country where we wanted to use pensioner bond holders’ money for debt restructuring. So there’s distrust. We can’t even afford vaccines for the six killer childhood diseases, but suddenly the Finance Minister says they have money and they’ve even disbursed it,” Prof Gyampo intimated.

He stressed that the trust deficit stems from the people’s perception about what is happening in the country currently.

“So it appears that the machines that are working are in the strongholds of the NPP, and when you go to the NDC stronghold, the machines malfunction so I was trying to tell Ken Attafuah that this issue has to do with trust deficit which has to do with this very perception held by some people, but you know, he didn’t quite understand why I would say that, when I told him what people are saying, if he had his way, he would have insulted me for telling him that.

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“If you’re in an institution as the head, and there are problems yet you come out publicly to say all is well, they say if you don’t sell you illness, you won’t get a cure, that’s what Ken Attafuah is doing.”

He stressed that the concern of Ghanaians has got to do with the “alacrity with which suddenly the Finance Minister has been able to generate enough resources to be able to fund whatever the NIA is doing; it has decreased the trust people have. Aren’t we the ones who said we don’t have money? They’re wondering what at all we’re doing that we can suddenly fund this.”

He called on the EC Chair to consider the timing of the C.I as inappropriate.

“I have worked with her for 14 years at IEA, I know her competence, I plead with her, I know whatever she wants to do is with good intentions, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions, she has good intentions but there has been no consensus building…she should take a look at the decision Afari Gyan took, due to lack of consensus [on the issue of ROPAL], and emulate same,” Prof Gyampo advised.

Source: classfmonline.com