Zanetor’s cynically belated voter registration is still fraudulent

The decision by Dr. Zanetor Rawlings to register to vote, during the ongoing Electoral Commission-sponsored limited voters’ registration exercise, will not in any way, shape or form affect the outcome of the lawsuit brought against the winner of last year’s Klottey-Korle National Democratic Congress’ parliamentary primary by the main loser, Mr. Nii Armah Ashitey, who is also the incumbent NDC-Member of Parliament for that Accra-Central constituency (See “Zanetor Rawlings Displays Voter’s ID Card” Modernghana.com 4/28/16).

It would not matter in the scheme of judicial proceedings and the verdict because at the time those pathologically corrupt party executives, both at the local and national levels, permitted the name of the eldest daughter of Chairman Jerry John Rawlings to be placed on the ballot, the thirty-something-year-old “divorced” common-law wife mother of two was not a dues-paying and card-carrying member of the National Democratic Congress.

What is even more significant, just a couple of weeks ago, the NDC’s General-Secretary, Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, came public to smugly assert that the decision to illegally have Dr. Rawlings deviously railroad Mr. Ashitey, the former Greater-Accra Regional Minister, was wholly taken at the party’s national headquarters by the wiry cross-dressing NDC scribe popularly known as General Mosquito, and that the one that the plaintiff ought to be tussling with in court was the Mosquito, and not the rookie physician.

Well, even as I noted in one of my previous columns on this subject, the real test of the legality of Dr. Rawlings’ decision to contest in the Klottey-Korle NDC’s parliamentary primary which, by the way, she won by a landslide margin, knowing full well that she was not even registered to vote, revolves around what the party’s constitution and standing rules and regulations have to say about who qualified to contest in a parliamentary primary, that is, whether just about any Ghanaian citizen could saunter into any NDC constituency headquarters to have her/his name placed on the ballot without any documentary evidence of the subject’s unquestionable membership and/or affiliation with the party.

As it stands presently, Dr. Rawlings’ registration as an eligible voter during the limited voters’ registration exercise only entitles her to vote in the upcoming November general election, it does not retroactively qualify her to contest in the Klottey-Korle parliamentary election as a candidate. At best, the NDC’s headquarters operatives can decide to have the irreparably tainted Klottey-Korle parliamentary primary annulled and promptly rescheduled, now that their favorite candidate has been duly registered both, presumably as a bona fide dues-paying member of the party and an eligible citizen-voter. But the question of whether such a flagrantly mischievous gambit in of itself meets both the test of laid-down party rules and regulations, as well as statutory legality remains to be seen.

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