Presidential Advisor on Health, Dr Anthony Nsiah-Asare is optimistic that the Electoral Commission (EC) can compile a new voters’ register while observing measures to control the spread of COVID-19.
Dr Nsiah-Asare who was speaking on UTV’s ‘Critical Issues’ last Saturday said since people have been queuing at the banks to transact businesses and engaging in other activities, we can register while practising social distancing.
“People have been going to the bank to withdraw money; it’s the same method. You control the crowd, and in Ghana, if you want to control the crowd it’s very simple,” he argued.
However, a private legal practitioner, lawyer Martin Kpebu speaking on the same platform, urged that we need to tread cautiously as a country.
Lawyer Kpebu disagreed insisting that by the time of elections, “the nation would have had a firm grip of the movement of the disease or there will be a vaccine”.
No vaccine by November
But Dr Nsiah-Asare insists that “by November there will be no vaccine, vaccine takes a long time”.
Lawyer Kpebu insists the EC can manage the old register for the December elections.
But according to Dr Nsiah-Asare “life should go on . . . corona will come, corona will go; there are some countries who have had their elections. If you have the will to do a credible transparent election, you can do it”.
To him, if people are having concerns with getting infected with the virus while registering for a new voters’ register; ‘then we should not even vote’.
