Supreme Court’s ruling that disallowed use of birth cert as document for voter registration bizarre – Ofosu Ampofo

The National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, has described the ruling of the Supreme Court that disallowed the use of birth certificates for compiling a new voter register as bizarre.

According to him, he is yet to comprehend the thinking that informed that decision.

He maintained the NDC’s stance that the birth certificate should be accepted as one of the sources of identification when compiling the voters’ register.

The Electoral Commission (EC) had proposed a new Constitutional Instrument for Registration of Voters which makes the Ghana Card the sole identification material for registration.

The NDC challenged the decision in court but the Supreme Court upheld the EC’s decision to exclude the existing voters’ ID cards as well as birth certs as identification documents for enrolment on the new voters’ register.

But Mr. Ampofo questioned that “When going for a passport, information from your birth cert is used to do the passport…the EC has said it would accept passports but has refused to work with birth certificates as proof that one is a Ghanaian. How can you accept the passport and not the birth cert?”

“The Supreme Court decision is one of the bizarre judgments that I have seen in the Court in Ghana. I am still yet to come to terms on what informed that decision”, he said on Angel FM’s Anopa Bofo Morning Show on Thursday.

He added that many voters would be disenfranchised since “the Ghana Card is work in progress and not every Ghanaian has it and even the NIA has admitted that about 2 million Ghanaians have not received theirs due to logistical and other constraints.”