National Chairman of the People's National Convention (PNC), Bernard Mornah
Bernard Mornah, National Chairman of the People’s National Convention (PNC), said a statement issued by the Greater Accra regional branch of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) criticising him for his comments on the controversy generated by the Supreme Court ruling on the use of National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) cards in voter registration, lacks clarity.
According to him, Ghana was practising democracy, which entitles every citizen to speak his mind, and, so, would forgive the authors of the statement.
The NPP regional arm, in a statement said it was “shocked [at] comments made by … Bernard Mornah, which sought to directly impugn the professional judgment of the nation's Supreme Court justices over their recent ruling on the contentious voters’ register. Bernard Mornah said, among other things, that the judges that gave the orders to the EC to produce the names of all persons that registered with NHIS cards in six days were unnecessarily interfering in the independence of the EC, and, therefore, proceeded to dare them [the judges] to take over the work of the commission.”
The statement added: “He [Mornah] was apparently livid by the judgment, which was given a day earlier, because he just likes the NDC, has always defended all the actions of Madam Charlotte Osei and the EC regarding the debate on the credibility of the voters’ register. Unfortunately for him, the court thought otherwise and, in fact, proceeded to vehemently chastise the EC having accused the commission of deliberately disrespecting the explicit orders of the court. The panel added that they won't sit down for the Electoral Commission ‘to plunge this country into chaos’ because of their reprehensible conduct and intransigence”.
“We do not only find Bernard Mornah's attack on the judges unfortunate and distasteful, but also contemptuous of the highest court of the land as he sought to bring the administration of justice into dispute. We least expect such recklessness from a whole national chairman of a major political party. It is almost no secret that this Bernard Mornah has not hidden his biases for the governing NDC in his public pronouncements, but we never thought he could stoop this low in his defence of the NDC and, of course, the EC in this particular instance.”
But reacting to the statement in an interview with Chief Jerry Forson, host of Ghana Yensom on Accra 100.5 FM Monday June 27, Mr Mornah said: “That is the spirit of democracy, and, so, I will forgive him [the author of the statement] this morning. But what I want to say…is that elections are won at the polling stations; it is not done in the court. If you have to win elections, it is won at the polling stations and it’s not won in the court.”
He further explained that the NHIS cards were used in the registration exercise ahead of the 2008 elections and wondered whether the deletion will go back as far as 2008 or limited only to 2012. “I’m asking these questions because tomorrow somebody can also get up and say driving licences are being obtained by non-Ghanaians, and so at what point can we stop these litigations? We started using NHIS card for registration since 2008, and, so, if we are to remove all those, who registered using NHIS, are we going for the people, who registered since 2008 or only 2012? And somebody goes and sits somewhere and issues a statement without a head and tail.”
“If they [NPP members] are looking for cowards in Ghana, I’m not one of them. I speak my mind and I’m not intimidated one millimetre. That advice has taken long in coming.”
