Coronavirus: Beefing up old register doesn’t make you fragile, shows leadership – Akoto Ampaw to EC

Due to the limited time left for the Electoral Commission (EC) to organize the 2020 polls, Private legal practitioner, Akoto Ampaw has advised the EC to drop the idea of a new voters register and beef up the current register for the upcoming elections.

According to him, making use of the old register does not mean victory for the National Democratic Congress and other civil society organizations (CSOs) who demonstrated against the call for a new register.

Such a move, Akoto Ampaw explained, will rather project the leadership of the EC as having prevented the country from plunging into a huge constitutional crisis.

Akoto Ampaw made these comments on CitiTV Wednesday, adding further: “If it becomes necessary that we cannot have a new voters register because of the circumstances of our time, it is a mark of leadership for the EC to pull out of that trajectory and find the best possible alternative solution and if the EC does that, it doesn’t show that it was wrong in its original position but the emergency circumstances are such that the most viable solution will be to use the old register and beef it up [no matter how] unsatisfactorily it may seem to the EC”.

“The EC should not in any way think that if it drops the new voters register case, it is a victory for the NDC…,” he advised.

Akoto Ampaw is a long time associate of the president and therefore his comments at this stage are very instructive.

The EC had scheduled April 18 as the date for the registration of the new voters register but due to the fight against the novel coronavirus, partial lockdown in "Greater Accra" and "Greater Kumasi" and the president's order banning social gatherings, the EC has suspended the registration until further notice.

Last month the EC was compelled to withdraw a Constitutional Instrument (CI) it laid before parliament.

The CI which was expected to give legal backing to the commission to compile a new register had defects which were highlighted at a meeting between the EC and the Subsidiary Legislation Committee of Parliament on Thursday.

Consequently, the commission was compelled to withdraw the CI and lay a new one.