Electoral Commission (EC) registration teams
are to visit each of Ghana's 43 prisons from 29 May to allow prisoners to
register to vote although, according to Electoral Commissioner Dr Kwadwo
Afari Gyan, they will only be able to vote in the presidential poll in
December and not in parliamentary elections. The president announced
government's intention to allow prisoners to vote last year, after years of
national debates, amid pressure from human rights campaigners and a Supreme
Court ruling which was backed by President John Atta Mills.
The EC had initially planned to register prisoners during the
40-day biometric registration exercise but changed its mind because of the lack
of credible databases confirming prisoners' identities. This prompted an outcry
from human rights groups who said that the electoral body was reneging on its
constitutional obligation to allow prisoners the right to elect their country's
leader. For example the well-known human rights lawyer, Kojo
Graham, threatened to take the EC to the Supreme Court if prisoners
were not included in the biometric registration exercise. A Ghana Prison Service
(GPS) taskforce was set up to tour the country's prisons, helping inmates to
provide authentic identification details.
The EC has also announced that a biometric voter registration
“mop-up” exercise is scheduled to take place on 9-10 June in selected
centres across Ghana. This will allow those who were unable to register the
first time around due to technical or other difficulties the chance to do
so.
For more news and expert analysis about Ghana, please see Ghana
Politics & Security.
© 2012 Menas Associates
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