Supreme Court ruling won’t affect November date – Adams

The campaign coordinator of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) for Election 2016, Kofi Adams, has expressed confidence that the 2016 elections will come off in November despite fears that the Supreme Court’s ruling on Tuesday July 5 might derail the plans of the Electoral Commission.

Mr Adams emphasised that the orders of the Supreme Court to the EC to delete names of over 56,000 persons, who registered as voters with their national health insurance scheme cards in 2012, would, in no way alter the EC’s schedule.

In response to sceptics, who have said the proposed November 7 date might not come off, Mr Adams told host of the Executive Breakfast Show on Class 91.3FM, Prince Minkah, on Wednesday July 6 that the only way elections would not come off in November would be if parliament fails to amend the law to approve the date change, which by legislation remains December 7.

“The Supreme Court has ruled and they say their ruling is not subject to the C.I.91, so what it means, therefore, is that you can register those people even today and they will vote tomorrow. So the Supreme Court itself has already started speaking with the November date,” he stated.

“What it means is that even if you deleted their names today and you are not able to register them until say in October, those people are still legal. Their being on the register doesn’t make the register an illegality…it doesn’t mean the Electoral Commission cannot deal with the situation, and they are capable of doing that. It doesn’t mean that they must automatically register people before the elections. They are going to delete, they are going to make the information available to you that you have been deleted based on the address that you provided on Form 1A and you will be given a chance to register; but when you don’t come and register, it doesn’t mean the elections should not happen.”

Mr Adams noted that if people deleted from the voter roll did not re-register, the EC would still not be hampered from conducting the polls in November.

“The 56,000 plus that is supposed to be deleted, they must be notified by the EC. You can choose to use Daily Graphic publication as a way of notifying them, you can use their addresses in Form 1A that they provided to go and paste on the house addresses that they provided or at the polling station where they registered or go with a van to do announcements and give them time to come and register. If they don’t come and register, it doesn’t mean you have committed an irregularity; the elections will still go on with the rest who are on the register. The only other way that November 7 cannot happen is for one side of the house to say that they are not supporting it. At least, the majority side feels that it’s a good thing,” he stressed.