Lets admit the obvious; pugnacious Ken Agyepong’s puerile antics and embattled Kwesi Nyantakyi’s shocking revelations were enthralling, despite sucking the air out of other crucial national issues. We stayed glued to our electronic gadgets to get the latest lurid details.
Hopefully, the indiscretions of the two public figures amid reports of runaway corruption in official circles, would spur us to continue the robust discussion/debate of public policy and everything in between.
Needless to say, it is in our collective interest to examine and vigorously question policies that impact our well being, which invariably brings me to the contentious Ghana Identification Card.
Inherently fraught with problems, obscenely overpriced and dripping with partisanship, the Ghana Identification Card could potentially erode public confidence in government, exacerbate political tensions and further polarize Ghanaian society.
While the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) pronounces the Ghana Card “a game changer” that will formalize and revamp our perpetually anemic economy, the main opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) is raising heckles about the project, portraying it as unwholesome and designed to marginalize a sizable portion of the Ghanaian population.
It is the usual dance and song by the two major political parties. Both have a huge stake in the registration of Ghanaians because to them it serves a larger political purpose.
Underpinning the NPP’s intransigence, its petulance and stubborn refusal to accede to NDC’s demands that Ghanaians who don’t have passports or birth certificates use voter identification cards to register, stems largely from a perverted sense of patriotism; its misplaced resolve to purge voters rolls of phantom voters it falsely identifies as opposition supporters — a horde of illegal aliens invading Ghana ostensibly to change the NDC’s political fortunes.
To date, the party hasn’t provided evidence, anecdotal or empirical, to buttress its claim that “the national register is bloated,” yet it continues to insist on stringent requirements Ghanaians must meet before they are issued Ghana Cards.
Not unexpected, the NDC is sticking to its guns and refuses to budge; as a matter of fact, the party is seeking legal redress even as its representatives in parliament refused to participate in the initial roll out of the registration exercise last week.
Gabby Otchere Darko, the formidable behind-the scenes NPP power broker dismissed the NDC’s complaints as sour bickering by sore losers.
Gabby’s acerbic remarks notwithstanding, the resistance by the NDC is admirable even though it is clear that the party is playing to the gallery.
Charges the NPP is out to disenfranchise 20 million Ghanaians are simply frivolous and without merit. It just won’t happen or else a crisis with dreadful consequences would ensue.
Much as we relish beating the NPP over the head with a cudgel about the National Identification Card issue, the NDC should not be spared similar outrage. The party could have resolved this problem when it controlled parliament and the Flagstaff House.
Yet for some reasons “far beyond human comprehension” the party woefully failed to act decisively on furnishing Ghanaians with identity cards that could pass muster anywhere they were presented as evidence of citizenship.
Both political parties have flawed mindsets on the Ghana Identification Card issue. Their ongoing turf war is least beneficial to Ghanaians who are, to put it, fed up with all the political shenanigans.
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