Scandal at Registry of Births and Deaths ...

Two weeks ago, the Minister of local government and Rural Development, Hon. Kwadwo Adjei-Darko, caused to be made a very strange announcement, followed by a voice over interview on Joy FM radio, that the Registry of Births and Deaths had made provision for the recruitment of registration officers and assistants in their 2003 Budget, that 95 of these had been recruited, and that some more would be recruited in the course of the year.

Strange, because budgetary provision for departmental staff is routine for all Ministries, Departments and Agencies that many wondered what was so special about these particular civil servants that warranted a ministerial announcement about their recruitment

Besides, under the decentralization programme, recruitment of recruitment of births and deaths registration officers and assistants has been kept to the barest minimum because it is one of the functions designed to be transferred to the Unit Committees and Urban, Zonal, Town and Area Councils for which community registration registers have already been printed and many unit committee members have already been trained for the purpose.

Fishing for ‘Dead’ Names

What was special about this particular recruitment, Ghana Palaver has learnt, was that 48 hours before the attempted ‘damage control’ announcement was made, news had leaked from within the Registry of Births and Deaths that the NPP Government had recruited 95 registration assistants to the Head Office of the Registry with the sole purpose of extracting and collating the names and personal particulars of persons over 18 years of age who had died since the 2000 elections.

The purpose?

Again Ghana Palaver has learnt that this was either to trace the dead people to their former places of abode and try to buy their Voter ID Cards off their families or, more likely, to use the names and particulars of the dead persons to prepare fake ID Cards for their under-aged and other unqualified supporters to use to vote in the 2004 elections.

Now that the “alarm has blown”, Ghana Palaver is not sure whether the deal will ahead as planned or whether the Party will try some other tactic, but this “impersonation” tactic represents the latest in the very desperate attempts of the NPP to try and rig the 2004 elections by all means, given the acknowledged lowering of support for the Party throughout the country, except in their Ashanti stronghold.

The previous rigging strategies had included the following:

Voters’ Registration Exercise

Kufuor’s NPP Government’s decision to issue National Identification Numbers and Cards and compile a National Identification Register out of which the Voters’ Register would be extracted represented the first step in the strategy.

This was fiercely resisted by the Electoral Commission, supported by the Attorney General’s Department. In the end, the Government had the law amended to enable it to issue the National Identification Numbers whilst the Electoral Commission compiled its Voters’ Register as a separate exercise.

Procurement Committee

The Kufuor Cabinet formed an Electoral Commission Procurement Committee to be responsible for the procurement of election materials, to be made up of mostly Government agencies and Government appointees, and sought to impose the Committee on the Electoral Commission.

Once again, the Electoral Commission stood up to the NPP Government, the opposition parties and civil society joined in, and the idea was aborted.

Accusations against the Chairman

The next attempt must have come straight out of Richard Nixon’s ‘Dirty Tricks’ book. The NPP Government got the servile, docile and compromised Auditor-General, Edward Dua-Agyeman, to leak a story to Nana Akufo-Addo’s ‘Statesman’ newspaper that the Electoral Commission Chairman, Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Djan, a fine gentleman by any means, had paid foreign monies belonging to the Electoral Commission into the accounts of the African Association of Electoral Authorities (AAEA) of which he is Secretary General.

The Auditor-General reported the matter to the police, and Dr. Afari-Djan has been under investigation since.

Criminal Questionnaire

Next, he NPP Government got the Police CID to serve very intrusive questionnaire on Dr. Afari-Djan and his two Deputies, Mr. Kwadwo Sarfo-Kantanka and Mr. David Kanga, as if they were common criminals.

Dismemberment of the EC

The next step was to offer a lucrative appointment to a member of the Commission, Professor Ernest Dumor, as Head of the National Identification Number Secretariat, and to attempt to unconstitutionally compel the two lady members of the Commission, Mrs. Cole and Ms. Solomon, to go on retirement.

This would pave the way for the NPP Government to “pack” the Commission, the fourth member of the 7-member Commission having died in 1995 and the vacancy having never been filled.

Damuah-Agyeman’s Retention

Mr. Damuah-Agyeman is the Chief Director of the EC. He is also a known NPP sympathizer. He reaches the retirement age in April this year, but the NPP is planning to continue him in office on contract until after the 2004 elections, whereas it is seeking to use the same age factor to retire the two lady members of the Commission.

Obviously, the NPP’s bag of ticks as far as the rigging of the 2004 elections are concerned is not exhausted. Keep faith with Ghana Palaver to keep abreast with developments on the NPP rigging front.