Cape Coast, Feb. 20, GNA - The President of the Central Regional branch of the Ghana Bar Association, Mr Peter Kwabena Ababio, on Thursday warned the public that the country's electoral laws would be strictly enforced during the forthcoming elections.

He said there were heavy penalties of fines or terms of imprisonment for violating such laws and in addition offenders could be barred from registering as voters for five years.

Mr Ababio gave the warning at a one-day training workshop on the replacement of the voters register for representatives of political parties and the media in the Central Region at Cape Coast. He mentioned among other things, registering more than once, unlawful possession of registration materials, preventing a qualified person from registering and registering in the name of some other person, as some of the offences and urged people to avoid falling prey to such offences to ensure a clean and credible voter register. Mr Ababio said all Ghanaians had a role to play in ensuring that the nation's young democracy strived and this must begin with a credible voter register.

Mr Albert Arhin, Director of Elections said the Commission had put in place a number of measures to ensure a clean register this year, adding that a 'transfer clearing house' would be established to take care of those who would temporarily transfer their votes whiles poll books would also be introduced to help people check their names and photographs on the register.

On the issue of registering and taking photographs on the same day, he said it would have been ideal for the Commission to have 21,000 cameras to cover all the polling stations, but currently it had about 3000 cameras which he noted would not be a problem since the polling stations had been zoned.

Mr Mark Kojo Anyimadu, Regional Director of the Commission, stressed that for the replacement exercise to be successful it was necessary that all stakeholders, particularly political parties and the entire voter population were well educated on the processes and regulations involved.

He said in view of the vital role political parties played in the development of democratic governance, it was crucial that their leaders were trained on the regulations, processes and other aspects of the voter registration exercise to enable them to educate their supporters and followers.

Professor Dominic Agyemang, lecturer at the University of Cape Coast, who presided, urged the participants to approach the workshop as nationalists rather than as political party representative and consider the nation's interest first before that of their parties and urged them to do away with past mistakes and ensure that this years' elections were free and fair.