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Three Regional Chairmen of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), in the Upper East, Brong Ahafo and Ashanti Regions, have filed a fresh suit at the Supreme Court, asking it to compel the Electoral Commission (EC) to furnish them with the list of all persons who registered with NHIS cards nationwide.

The Regional Chairmen say their request has become necessary in the light of the Supreme Court’s order in the Abu Ramadan case, directing the EC to expunge such names from the voters’ register.

Speaking to Citi News, the lawyer for the three, Nana Obiri Boahene, said their decision is borne out of their desire to help the EC perform that role effectively. “The matter is simple, the Brong Ahafo Regional Chairman of the NPP, Ashanti Regional Chairman of NPP, and the Upper East Regional Chairman are saying that give us the list of those who used NHIS cards to register. Give us the names under constituency by constituency.

It is a very harmless request, but if the EC will not comply then we will know the next line of action to take.

We asking the EC to just get us the list of people who used NHIS cards to register in 2012, 2015, constituency by constituency.They must produce the list. We are not joking, we are serious, we mean business. They cannot take Ghanaians for a ride.

We will not tolerate that, we will see to it that the right thing is done.”

Background

In 2014, Abu Ramadan and Evans Nimako won a similar suit in which the Supreme Court unanimously granted a perpetual injunction restraining the Electoral Commission from using the National Health Insurance Card as an identity card for voter registrations.

The Supreme Court granted the reliefs which were sought by the two over the EC’s use of the NHIS Card as a proof of qualification to register.

May 5, 2016, ruling Following the 2014 ruling that banned the use of the NHIS cards for registration, Abu Ramadan went back to the Supreme Court this year, seeking among other reliefs a declaration that the voters’ register was not credible for the polls in November.

His arguments were that those who registered with the NHIS card still had their names in the register as well as some minors and other ineligible persons.

But the Supreme Court in its ruling on Thursday, May 5, instead ordered the deletion of the names of all those who registered with the NHIS cards.

It also asked the Electoral Commission to remove the names of all other ineligible persons including the names of deceased persons. It, however, said it could not by virtue of the few ineligible names on the register; declare the entire register inappropriate for the elections as the applicants were seeking. It rather asked the EC to take immediate steps to clean the voters’ register.

The court, however, did not give the EC a specific timeline for the cleaning with barely five months to the polls.

There appears however to be confusion as the EC claimed that the Supreme Court’s ruling did not ask them to delete names of NHIS registrants. However, that position has been rejected by one of the Supreme Court Judges, who insisted that the ruling of the court was clear on the deletion of such names.