Accra, March 13, GNA - The National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) in collaboration with the Citizens Social Club (CSC), a community based organization (CBO) in Accra, on Saturday intensified education campaign on the forthcoming voters' registration exercise scheduled to start from March 16 to March 29.
At a public forum in Accra, the two institutions took participants through the process of registration, the importance of the exercise, the tenets of good governance, the essence of political, religious and ethnic tolerance, and the legality of the registration exercise. The participants made up of media practitioners, politicians, religious and social leaders and a cross-section of the public, were taken through a dramatized episode of the importance of the registration.
The drama exposed the ignorance of most people about their civic and constitutional rights, created the platform for information sharing and enticed them to act based on informed knowledge.
At the end of the show and lectures, some of the participants the Ghana News Agency talked to, praised the organizers for involving the local people in the forum.
They said the forum offered them the opportunity to understand the essence of the voters' registration, the need for registration and stressed that any doubts and misconceptions they had, had been erased and that they were ready to participate fully in the exercise. Speaking on the tenets of good governance, the Associate Executive Director of Legal Resource Centre, Mr Raymond Atuguba castigated politicians and civil society organizations for measuring good governance only from the political viewpoint to the detriment of the economy.
He said political governance and economic governance were inseparably yardsticks for the measuring of good governance, "any country which neglects one of it cannot be said to have good governance".
Mr Atuguba also complained about the administrative overlaps of some governance institutions, adding that such practices bred corruption and created fertile grounds for failure and confusion on the fields of operation.
He mentioned in particular the NCCE, the Electoral Commission (EC), and the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) whose public education functions, he said, overlapped, thereby creating confusion and wastage in the field.
Mr Atuguba called for the de-segregation of the public education functions of governance institutions to ensure maximum utilization of both material and human resource for greater impact.
Mr Eric Bortey, NCCE Metro Director, explaining the essence of the registration said all eligible voters had to register afresh during the period, and be issued with new voters' identity cards to enable them to vote in the December and subsequent elections.
He said the new registration would demand two photographs of the voter: one to be placed on the identity card and the other alongside the person's name in the register to facilitate easy identification. Mr Bortey said the implementation of the registration process would take place in all registration centres from the stipulated period. He explained that due to lack of sufficient cameras, some centres would not run the registration process and the issuance of the cards simultaneously.
"In most regions, the two processes will be executed in two distinctive operational phases - this means that in most regions there will be no cameras at the registration centres, so people will not get their photo ID cards at the time they register".
He said such voters would be notified in advance when to go back to have their photographs taken and to be issued with their voters' ID cards.
The NCCE Metro Director said multiple registrations, registration by ineligible persons and the existence on the register of the names of dead persons had contributed in varying degrees to the bloating of the present register, hence the need for the exercise.
Alhaji Nii Futa, an Opinion Leader in Nima, chaired the forum while Alhaji Osman Suleman, CSC President outlined the objectives of the club, which were to educate community members on their national responsibilities and address socio-economic problems that affected development.
