The New Patriotic Party’s parliamentary candidate for the Wassa East Constituency in the Western Region, Wilson Arthur, is threatening to sue the Electoral Commission over the list presented to the Supreme Court as persons who registered with the National Health Insurance cards in the Wassa East Constituency.
According to him, over 150 persons out of the 269 names presented by the EC were not in the database of the NHIA, while others on the list have denied ever registering with NHIS cards during the March 2012 voter registration exercise.
[contextly_sidebar id=”VkqPWwmLsiLwKlwiTz4Y1PvOYeHLz3Ry”]Mr. Arthur, who is also the chief Executive Officer of Skyy Media Group, speaking to Citi News, noted that the validation of the EC’s list at the NHIA for the constituency confirmed the anomaly.
The Supreme Court last Monday ordered the Electoral Commission to delete the names of 56, 000 persons whose details were captured on the electoral register using the NHIS card as a proof of identity.
The parliamentary nominee explained that, “what we did as a party after the list was presented was to scrutinize it. We noticed that all the 269 names [from the Wassa East Constituency] were from 7 polling stations, and out of the 7, six vote for the NPP so we were alarmed.”
“So what we did was to go to the grounds and speak to the persons with their names on the list, and most of them said they did not have the card in 2012 let alone use it for the registration.”
“It did not end there. We took the entire list to validate it at the NHIA database and guess what, we realized that 154 names out of the 296 as presented by the EC was not correct. Some of the numbers attached to the names were not NHIS numbers. For example, the number they gave to one Kofi Ntsiful Junior [in the Wassa East Constituency] 10627195 is not an NHIS number….And there were some on the list with different names. For example, Mankala Bubey who is at Ahomakromwa [in Wassa East] had NHIS number 10627409. But during the validation we saw that this number is linked to a person at Kpando”.
Mr. Arthur, who is contesting the Wassa East seat for the second time with the incumbent NDC MP, the Deputy Minister for Roads and Highways, Isaac Adjei Mensah, is of the firm belief that if the Electoral Commission fails to explain the process with which it obtained the 296 names, he will sue it.
The Wassa East Constituency, until it was carved out of the Mpohor Constituency, was occupied by the NPP.
Some individuals and organisations raised doubts about the credibility of the list of 56,000 voters presented to the Supreme Court by the EC, as the list of persons who registered using the NHIS card as proof of Ghanaian citizenship.
Former Attorney General and private legal practitioner, Ayikoi Otoo, questioned the credibility of the list, together with President of IMANI Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe.
Even Mr. Abu Ramadan, the complainant in the suit, together with his lawyers, rejected the figure describing as spurious, when it was presented to the Court.
They filed an application to challenge the figures, but could not produce anymore names when the Chief Justice challenged them to do so, hence the ruling of the court on Tuesday, for the 56,000 names to be deleted.
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By: Obrempong Yaw Ampofo/citifmonline.com/Ghana