EC must not delete ‘NHIS voters’ - Rawlings

President of the United States Africa Command, Ghana (US AFRICOM-Ghana), Abednego Rawlings Orstin, has stated that there is no way the Electoral Commission (EC) of Ghana will be allowed to remove the names of persons who registered with National Health Insurance Scheme cards(NHIS).

According to him, deleting names of such people from the register will be a violation of their rights, adding that the judges should have been a bit reasonable in their ruling;

“Our judges are not pro-active and apart from sitting in their chambers, they never involve themselves in the activities of other institutions to guide them but now they want the Electoral Commission (EC) to delete people whose names were registered with NHIS cards, why? It is impossible for Electoral Commission (EC) to do that which our Justices know for sure that it will create confusion,” he said.

Mr. Rawlings argued that every Ghanaian has the right to vote with the NHIS cards , adding that during registration, agents from various political parties were there to check whether the National Health Insurance Scheme, National Identification holder was Ghanaian or not.

The U S AFRICOM Ghana President said nobody really knows who National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS)registrants will vote for in the upcoming general election and so it’s useless for anybody to prevent them from voting.

Mr. Rawlings said, “JusticeDotse and his group of judges should not play with the lives of Ghanaians. Their moves will rather cause mayhem in the country ahead of the 2016 general elections. Once all the political parties’ agents were there during registration people who registered with NHIS cards must be allowed to cast their votes on Election Day”.

Instead for them (our judges) to assist Electoral Commission (EC) to fix the election date which is the main subject for our justices and put things in order, they are rather engaging in needless things, he added.

He reiterated that the EC can never delete those names from the voters register adding that those who registered with the NHIS cards are real Ghanaians. “They were well vetted and went through proper screening before they got their voter identification cards. 

Agents of the various political parties verified those who registered with NHIS cards so it qualifies them to vote in upcoming elections,” he concluded.