'Registration Our Prime Focus', Wednesday, October 26, 2011, Front Page

The Chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC) has indicated that the focus of the commission now is on the biometric registration process and not verification.

The verification process, he said, was yet to receive a concrete decision from the EC and explained that even though the two — the registration and the verification — complemented each other, the EC would go ahead with the registration, with the hope of receiving more funds to do the verification.

“If done well, biometric voter registration can ensure a verifiable voters register, in the sense that a person’s name can occur only once in the register and at a specific polling station, thereby ensuring that that person can vote only once under his or her name,” Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan said.

The EC Chairman was speaking at a forum organised by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in Accra yesterday to solicit the views of key stakeholders, so that some of the concerns raised on the adoption of the biometric voter registration could be debated to consolidate good governance and multiparty democracy in the country.

The forum attracted representatives of political parties, civil society organisations and the media.

Ever since the EC announced its intention to use a biometric voters register in the 2012 election, it has come under scrutiny from all sections of society.

Concerns over the planned biometric registration do not centre on rejecting the use of the biometrics per se but various aspects of the exercise. Questions centring on technical, logistic and legal issues which have been raised by sections of the public and key stakeholders include the transparency of the process, timeliness, security and verification features of the system.

But Dr Afari-Gyan noted that confusion could easily surround a biometric voter registration project, sometimes due to misinformation arising from the lack of knowledge or malice.

“So it is important to engage with stakeholders towards building concensus on the direction of the process. Moreover, ultimately, the generality of Ghanaian people must know what problem biometric voter registration is intended to address, as well as how they are expected to participate in the process,” he stated.

He noted that any multiple registration that had been done anywhere in Ghana under the system would be found out through a full search of the fingerprints and photographs of registrants, adding that confirmed multiple registration would not only be expunged from the register but also the persons concerned would be dealt with by the law.

Explaining how the exercise would be carried out, he said the country would be divided into zones, but indicated that the EC was currently considering various zoning options and would engage the political parties to secure concensus on that exercise before any implementation.

The decision, he said, was informed by the fact that even though registration would be polling station-based, with 6,500 kits, it was obvious that the EC could not carry out registration at all the projected 23,000 polling stations at a time.

He acknowledged the commitment of the government to the exercise, as the commission had so far received $50 million out of its budgeted $80 million for the registration only, and said an effective verification processs on the day of the election, which would equip each polling station with two verification systems in the face of possible system breakdown, would cost an extra $50 million.

Dr Afari-Gyan observed that the biometric register was not the solution to all the electoral challenges the country faced but rather vigilance on election day, as no machine would be vigilant enough for the political parties.

He discredited the call for the country to go for the biometric kits of other countries that were using the system, saying such a move could delay the process because calibrations had to be re-done before the kits could be rolled out.

The former Commissioner for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Mr Justice Emile Short, who chaired the forum, while calling for adequate consultation to ensure that the exercise ran smoothly, urged the government to ensure the timely release of funds needed for the project.

The Member of Parliament (MP) for Manhyia, Dr Mathew Opoku Prempeh, for his part, said while the EC had already lost a lot of time, it had not adequately addressed voter education issues nor allayed fears that the country could travel the path of African countries that had used biometric registers.

However, the Technical Advisor on Biometric System Application for the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr Ahmed M. Gadel, said priority should be given to the creation of an accurate and credible register and not the clamour for verification, which was yet to be achieved anywhere in Africa.

The MP for New Juaben North, Mr Hackman Owusu-Agyeman, urged the EC to stop dictating terms to the various stakeholders and rather ensure that people had confidence in the system which it was trying to build.