In February 2012, Dr. Kojo
Afari-Gyan, Electoral Commissioner of Ghana, announced the timetable for the
much-anticipated biometric voter registration exercise ahead of the country’s
2012 general election. If all goes well,
the registration exercise will be held between March 24 and May 5, 2012 with
the aim to compile a new ‘credible’ voters list ahead of the country’s sixth
general election after its transitional elections in 1992. Like in any election,
the compilation of a clean voters list is a first critical step to conducting a
genuine democratic election. Ghana’s EC has been praised in repeatedly
increasing the quality of elections in the country, and given this reputation
perhaps we shouldn’t be worried, however, recent events suggest the need for us
to stay alert ahead of the inevitably competitive elections later this year.
In 2008, allegations of a bloated
voter register and the logistical and administrative bottlenecks that
characterized the conduct of the revision exercise, as well as the crudely organized
2010 District Assembly Elections have brought the Ghana EC’s reputation into
question lately. Going into the 2012 general elections, the success of the EC
in conducting the voter 2012 registration exercise would earmark a crucial
first step towards rekindling trust in its competence and assuring Ghanaians
that it could once again conduct a ‘free and fair’ election. In the coming
weeks, as the EC prepare (through its scheduled pilot registration exercises)
to undertake the first biometric registration, the EC must marshal its
reputable technocratic experience to ensure that Ghana is placed on a sound
footing for the 2012 elections.
In 2008, Ghana went to the
presidential polls with a ‘compromised’ voters’ list. It all started with
disputes over alleged inflation of the summary figures of the 2006 voters list
that was due for revision ahead of the 2008 elections. The then opposition party, the National
Democratic Congress (NDC), raised this allegation generating immense doubt about
the credibility of the list. In a press conference following the heated
exchanges amongst political parties and some EC officials in the media, the EC
finally announced that the mistakes identified on the summary figures were due
to a technical hitch and assured that the list was intact. Subsequently, the
revision exercise itself suffered severe challenges. The EC could not start the
exercise as scheduled due to
supposed delays in procuring equipment, release of funds from the government,
and hiring of qualified temporary staff. Consequently, the voter registration finally began on 31st July
2008, with only one day’s advance notice.
When it came to implementation of the exercise,
although each of the approximately 4,800 electoral areas in the country was
expected to have a registration workstation, only about 2,500 workstations were
available. Moreover, these items were received late at the district level and
consequently at the registration centers for the exercise. Furthermore, consequent
to the delays the local official barely had time to draw the appropriate
schedules, and thus no advance information was available centrally on where the
mobile registration workstations would be located on which dates. The Coalition
of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) for example reported that in at least
one region, the distribution of equipment and materials among the numerous districts
was haphazard and did not follow any formula that considered the size of the
districts. As in previous voter registration exercises, newspaper
reports suggested that the political parties actively bussed people to registration
centers and aided the registration of minors in their strongholds.
At the end of the 11-day voter registration
time period, long queues remained at the various registrations center; a great
number of prospective voters had been unsuccessful in placing their names of
the voters list. Consequently, the EC extended registration by two days to
enable all qualified voters to register. After the exercise the EC exhibited
the provisional voters list to help identify and expunge unqualified persons
from the list. Accordingly to the EC, approximately 0.4% of new registrations
were challenged in 2008, which is 10 times the rate of challenges against new
registrations in 2004, and this provisional list was cut down to a final list
of approximately 12.5 million voters. In spite of the attempts to clean the voter list of
unqualified voters, the EC reported that 2008 revised list was inflated by
about a million. This raised much concern for an election that was later won by
less than 50,000 votes. No voters’ list is clean. Yet if elections are highly
competitive, and political actors lack trust in the voters list, narrow winning
margins could serve as a springboard to violent contestation. Bogus voters
registration processes and questionable voters list undermined democratic
processes in Senegal in 1993 and recently presaged the electoral debacle in
neighboring Cote D’Ivoire’s 2010 presidential polls.
In Ghana, the organization of
subsequent elections after 2008 suffered similar challenges. For example, in
2010 the District Assembly Elections were postponed several times (owing partly
to the failure of the EC to secure early passage of a legal instrument that was
to aid the re-demarcation electoral areas) and subsequently the staggering of
the elections coupled with opaque and inadequate voter education, raised heavy
eyebrows from the political parties and other stakeholders on the competence of
the EC in conducting the 2012 election. The EC thus must use the impending
registration exercise to rekindle and boost the nations confidence in its
competence.
The above account suggests that
Ghana’s elections have not been entirely clean and still face both technical
and logistical challenges. In 2008 the CODEO and other observer groups
(including EU-Delegation) reported on the logistical challenges that nearly
marred the exercise in some registration centers and illegal payments of
prospective voters to get their names on the list. Moreover, systematic studies
the 2008 voters’ revision exercise suggests that despite the vigilance of the
EC and election monitors, political parties maneuvered their way around unsuspecting
electoral officers to inflate the register to their electoral advantage. Some
of the recommendations made by the observer groups are being implemented by the
EC ahead of the 2012 polls. Significant among these has been the implementation
of a biometric voters’ registration system.
As the EC prepares for the registration
exercise special attention should be paid to providing adequate registration
materials to all registration centers to avoid mistrust in its judgments and allegations
of purposeful disenfranchise to sections of the population. Special attention
should also be paid to the needs of Persons with Disability and other vulnerable
groups. Voter education should be extensive, and straight-forward. Adequate arrangements should also be made to
adequately register qualified prisoners as approved by the courts. The EC
should also come out clearly on progress towards the registration of Ghanaians
in the diaspora.
If Ghana’s 2012 election is to be
a success, other stakeholders must also play their part in ensuring a credible
registration exercise and events preceding the election. The Police Service (and
the security service) must ensure a peaceful atmosphere throughout the process
and the strict and impartial application of the law. Political parties should
continue to engage collaboratively with the ECs technical committee and resolve
issues amicably. Political parties must desist from attempts to subvert the
process by illegally ferrying people across constituencies and aiding the
registrations of minors. The Government should keep its side of the bargain by
releasing allocated funds to election related bodies in a timely manner to facilitate
the process. The National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) should
undertake extensive civic education to encourage participation in the exercise.
Finally, civil society group should monitor the process and audit the final
voters list to boost voters’ confidence in the credibility of process and list
ahead of the 2012 elections.
So far, the EC’s pilot exercise
seems to be on schedule and has been a tremendous success. The momentum should
be sustained and maintained to boost the confidence of Ghanaians in the EC to
conduct a credible and peaceful 2012 elections. Ghana cannot fail the continent
in its march towards democratic consolidation and it starts with getting the
voters’ list right.
