Biometric Voting System Must Be Verifiable - Nana Akufo Addo

The flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has stated that the fifty million cedis needed by the Electoral Commission for the verification system of the Biometric Voter�s register should not be an excuse by the EC not to implement the system. According to Nana Addo, adding a verification system to the biometric voting process would help check cases of double voting, impersonation and several other electoral malpractices that crop up during elections. Speaking to Citi News from Germany where he is attending the �Africa Conference 2011�, as the Keynote Speaker was speaking on the theme: �Africa�s Role Model? Democracy and Elections in Ghana�. The NPP flagbearer cited neighbouring Ivory Coast as a clear example of a country that employed the biometric voting system but fell short of placing an apt verification system in place at the various polling stations. �We don�t want the situation that happened in Cote d�Ivoire, they registered the people and at the of the day they allowed thousands of lives displaced, half a million people resulting in a great deal of ups and downs because the verification was not part of their system, none of us in Ghana want to go down that road�. The Chairman of the Electoral Commission Dr. Kwadwo Afari Gyan on Tuesday stated that the biometric voters register will commence in the first quarter of next year instead of the planned last quarter of this year (2011). According to him the delays suffered by the commission is due to a court injunction brought against it by a company that questioned the Electoral Commissions means of procurement. He has state that the Electoral Commission would need an extra fifty million Ghana cedis to ensure that the verification system is successfully added to the biometric register system. However, Nana Addo told Citi News that the amount should not prevent the electoral commission from adding a verification system to the biometric register system since would ensure a credible election. Nana Addo mentioned that Ghana�s democracy is still growing and needs the collective effort of the entire nation and the commitment of the electoral commission to ensure that the democratic tenets of this country are entrenched. He said Ghana has come a long way of accommodating the imperfection and irregularities of the old systems in the electoral process and if the country is making a conscious decision to improve the quality of the nation�s register, which would cost so much money then the country needs to get value for money.