A member of the erstwhile Armed Forced revolutionary Council has joined the string of local protests against the passage of the controversial Representation of the People?s Amendment (ROPA) Bill.
Retired Major Boakye Gyan says the government?s decision to pass the bill to allow Ghanaians living abroad to vote in elections is ill advised.
Mr Bokaye Gyan, who was nurturing presidential ambitions on the ticket of a unified Nkrumahist front, says the NPP government?s reason for insisting that the bill be passed is untenable.
?I have lived abroad myself and when the electoral registration started a couple of years back, I took a plane and came to registered and when the elections came I came over to vote.
Now if there is anybody abroad who sufficiently feels the same way about the issues as I do, they will buy a ticket, come and register and carry out their civic duties. It?s not asking for too much,? he said.
Mr Boakye Gyan contends that Ghanaians working abroad do not directly pay taxes to the public office to enable government to set aside huge sums of monies to enfranchise Ghanaians abroad.
?Most of us working abroad do not pay direct taxes to the public office to enable government to sponsor, go round and set aside monies that should otherwise be used to build schools and hospitals but allow people abroad to exercise their civic responsibility for which they have no responsibility for,? he said.
Source: GhanaWeb
