EC to enforce laws against ‘Guarantor Contractors’

The Electoral Commission, Ghana (EC) says it is illegal for any registered voter to guarantee for a prospective applicant if they are not directly related.

The Commission says it is against Constitutional Instrument (CI) 91 if a guarantor is not a “parent, sibling, spouse, guardian and other”.

“[CI 91] specifies that an applicant must be well known to the guarantor and that anything contrary to that constitutes an electoral office punishable by law,” the Commission said in public information on Tuesday, July 14.

“According to the CI 91, it is an offence to ‘Make an entry of statement, which that person knows to be false or does not believe to be true for the purpose of registering a voter’.”

All this comes in the wake of increasing cases of persons said to be positioned at registration centres and serving as ‘Guarantor Contractors’.

Such an act, the EC stressed, is illegal in the CI and “officials of the Commission will not hesitate to hand over such persons to the security agencies to face the law”.

It said under the guarantor window, individuals vouching for other applicants are required to swear an oath affirming that he or she knows the applicant and is qualified to register as a voter at that registration centre.

“People who commit such an offence are liable on summary conviction to a fine of not more than five hundred penalty units or a term of imprisonment of not more than two years or both.”