THE Vice-President, Mr John Dramani Mahama, has urged the clergy to admonish their church members to avoid double registration when the biometric registration exercise begins in March this year.
He said the biometric register would capture biological and personal data of all registered voters and, therefore, any registered voter who would attempt to register twice would be exposed and consequently prosecuted.
Mr Mahama made the appeal at the induction service for executive members of the Ghana Pentecostal and Charismatic Council (GPCC) in Accra yesterday.
The executive members are Apostle Dr Opoku Onyinah, the President of the GPCC and Chairman of the Church of Pentecost; Rev Sam Korankye Ankrah, the First Vice-President of the GPCC and Founder and Apostle General of the Royalhouse Chapel International; Apostle Ebenezer Nsesa Abebrese, the President of the Apostolic Church, Ghana, and Rev Dr Paul Yaw Frimpong-Manso, the General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God, Ghana.
The ceremony was attended by reverend ministers, pastors, representatives of the National Chief Imam, Sheikh Osmanu Nuhu Sharubutu, and the Second Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Rev Prof Mike Oquaye, who represented the flag bearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Akufo-Addo.
The executive has a five-year mandate to carry out the mission of the GPCC, which includes maintaining high standards of the Christian doctrine and promoting good relationships between member churches and other organisations in Ghana and the world at large.
The Vice-President said the 10 fingerprints and eyelids of registered voters would be taken during the biometric registration exercise.
Therefore, he said, it would be difficult for anybody to either register twice or vote twice and indicated that the system would automatically delete the data of whoever wanted to register more than once.
Mr Mahama asked all eligible persons to register during the exercise, since it was their civic responsibility.
Besides, he said, it was crucial for all qualified persons to vote during the December presidential and parliamentary elections to influence the selection of people to lead the country.
He said Ghana had been touted as a model of democracy in Africa and for that reason Ghana was expected to meet higher standards during this year’s election.
He affirmed the government’s commitment to support the Electoral Commission (EC) with all the needed resources and support to organise free, transparent and peaceful elections.
The Vice-President said God had blessed the country with peace but cautioned Ghanaians not to take that peace for granted.
What Ghanaians should do, he said, was jealously protect the peace by championing efforts at promoting peace and development in the country.
He particularly asked the clergy to be neutral in their utterances to ensure peace among their congregations.
Mr Mahama was concerned that modernisation and Westernisation had eroded the country’s value system to the extent that respect for the elderly had gone down.
He said the fact that Ghana was a secular state did not mean that the government should not condemn social decadence and promote good moral values, noting that although many Western countries had developed economically, the moral fibre of those societies had deteriorated.
He, therefore, charged the clergy to partner the government to restore the country’s cultural and moral values.
In his address, Apostle Dr Onyinah condemned the politics of insults and unproved allegations against perceived political opponents, saying that phenomenon “poses grave danger to the future of our country and the peaceful conduct of the 2012 general election”.
He, therefore, appealed to political parties to avoid activities and pronouncements that could incite violence.
“We wish to recommend to our political leaders to sanction their followers who resort to this unfortunate behaviour,” he said.
Apostle Dr Onyinah said as its contribution to a peaceful general election, the GPCC would soon launch a programme dubbed, ‘PLUS-Ghana (Peace, Love, Unity, Stability in Ghana).
The Vice-Chairman of the Christian Council of Ghana, Rt Rev Francis Amenu, charged the new executive members to work as a team and avoid breaking their front.
No comments:
Post a Comment