<<Print>>

All ye beings of the motherland cannot but be aware that these days, the airwaves are saturated with biometrics. The ebb and flow of the biometric waves may be about securing free and fair elections in 2012. With congresspeople, though, it seems like it is something else; in their usual thinking of diabolic thoughts. Submissions on air appear to focus on whether to biometric or not to biometric; when what ought to be the real issue is foolproof biometric register and what we can, and need to do, to effectively utilize it maximally in ensuring a just election 2012. In my humble view, what we should be thinking about is biometric register that guarantees congress cannot cheat the motherland into re-election. Not long ago, I raised the issue of the congresspeople�s interest in technology applied to elections only when it can help them cheat. Now, you see the evidence all over the place. Who did not hear them brag all over the place that they have given the Electoral Commission eighty million United States dollars to conduct biometric registration of voters for the thumb power exercise scheduled for year 2012. I am convinced they have done their homework to realize, as I said before, that biometric registration cannot stop under age registration and neither will it check multiple voting. They are, thus, determined to fool everyone by shouting you cannot cheat with a biometric register so that after they have cheated they can justify that they could not have cheated because of biometric register. And so immediately elephant patriotic raised the issue of verification as a condition for voting, the biometric cheerleading turned into making empty waves about biometric registration. In their usual manner of twisting facts to suit their lies and cheating ways; always assuming we all have fleeting attention span or gullible enough not to notice their calculated deceit, they are now saying the patriotic people proposed biometric registration. On no, congress! I heard and read it and so did many, many of my compatriots. What they of the institute of the doyen of Ghanaian politics said was that we should go e-voting in 2012. They have enough ICT knowledge and expertise to know the difference between e-voting and biometric registration. They do, because they have a minister who was actively involved, even when in opposition, in the World Summit of Information Society, the baby of Kofi Annan of the motherland, in bridging the digital divide. Turning digital challenges into digital opportunities was the WSIS slogan. Biometric registration is one of the early steps in e-voting. It is followed by verification of the registered. The final stage is casting the vote electronically by pressing a button for your preferred choice with the vote instantaneously counted. Let the patriotic people, and all those trying to avoid violence during or after the 2012 vote, understand that there are still possibilities for cheating during and after all the electronic processes. I am reliably informed that at a point during the 2012 voting, software for adding up votes had been designed to suppress, and was actually used in suppressing, NPP votes in the counting process! If you didn�t know, I am telling you it happened. Assuming that all that is fixed, there could be attempts to reduce electronically generated total voting to hard copy paper that can be signed by polling agents. Any such act can easily be manipulated; the famous, or infamous, Amo versus Sofomaame Addotey of Ayawaso West-Wuogon Constituency transposition of figures in 1996, to wit. I can see so many loopholes that could be exploited by a determined congress to steal the 2012 elections as they did in 2008. Nothing will stop their determination. That determination can, however, be effectively thwarted by forever vigilance at every step of the election process. Now, they are talking the biometric registration as the only sure way of ensuring an election which will be free and fair. They hope to achieve two things with that kind of talk. First, they want it accepted that biometric register is the only way to achieve free and fair election. The second is to divert attention from any other ways by which they can cheat. That is why I would like to remind the patriotic people and all concerned about achieving truly free and fair elections 2012, to be extra vigilant. That it is not only through biometric register that congress can cheat. I fully endorse the no verification no vote by biometric register stance taken by any compatriot, patriotic or anyone of other colour or colours or whatever political persuasion. Congress is very determined to cheat. They have the cheating brains assembled. So beware; otherwise they will succeed in cheating, come 2012. Congress should not be allowed to cheat into re-election.