EC to resume ‘NHIS’ cards re-registration on Aug 5

The Electoral Commission (EC) has decided to resume the re-registration of deleted NHIS cards registrants from Friday, August 5 to August 12 despite stating otherwise earlier.

The EC has also said there will be a further opportunity for the deleted registrants to re-register between August 19 and 26 during the continuous registration exercise.

This was revealed in an Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting on Wednesday, 3rd August, 2016.

It is not yet clear if the EC was bowing to pressure from the various stakeholders who purported that its initial decision not to extend the re-registration was unconstitutional as it would result in a significant number of people being disenfranchised.

The MP for the Efutu Constituency, Alex Afenyo Markin, and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Ashanti Region, for instance, had petitioned EC to extend the re-registration period over disenfranchisement fears.

Afenyo Markin explained that as part of the Supreme Court order to delete NHIS registrants from the voters’ register, in order not violate their fundamental electoral rights, the EC was to give adequate notice to those affected by processes of deletion and re-register them.

The concerns notwithstanding, the EC had maintained that it would not extend the deadline for the re-registration exercise despite revealing only 24, 287 of the deleted NHIS registrants, were re-registered during the previous 10-day exercise.

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