Charlotte Osei, EC Chairperson
CHAIRPERSON OF the Electoral Commission (EC), Charlotte Osei, has blamed the delays in officially declaring the results of the 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections to the breakdown of its electronic results transmission devices.
According to her, the commission had challenges with the machines, compelling it to direct its officials to use the manual process.
She indicated that the commission had reason to believe that the electronic system had been compromised.
“One of the main benefits of the electronic results transmission is that it would have enabled us to see the results of all the 29,000 polling stations before declaring the final results as recommended by the Reforms Committee we set up after the 2012 elections.
“Unfortunately, we had challenges with our electronic results transmission system; we have reason to believe that it has been compromised,” she said.
Ms. Osei made this known yesterday in her first media briefing after polls were closed on Wednesday, December 7.
She gave the assurance that the commission could not manipulate the results in any way.
That was after several well-meaning Ghanaians, including the National Peace Council and the Christian Council, had called on the EC to declare the results.
There were widespread public agitations across the country over the EC’s inability to quickly declare the results of the polls, following its claim that there were reports of over-voting in some parts of the country.
Per the Public Elections Regulations (C.I. 94) the EC does not have the right to decide to review the results of an election on its own unless a candidate who feels aggrieved has formerly applied to it requesting for a review.
Other Challenges
The EC boss indicated that it had encountered other challenges with respect to the elections which had restrained it from declaring the results as called for by Ghanaians.
“In others, we also had some challenges with the polling station declaration of results; eventually it was agreed to move everything to the constituency collation centre,” she said.
“And then, there were some arguments between the parties which resulted in our electricity power supply being vandalized and so there was no power.
“In Bawku Central, collation is still ongoing and we are still awaiting the outcome from there,” she indicated.
Northern, Volta
She claimed, “We (EC) still have no results from our head office in the Northern Region and Volta Region so we are still waiting to receive for those.
“As at 5pm, we have 90 constituency results for the parliamentary and the presidential at the National Collation Centre.
“But for the 90 constituency results that we have here they have not been signed by the party agents at the National Collation Centre here.”
The EC boss underscored, “Candidates’ agents are saying that they want to see the pink sheets from polling stations within all the 90 constituencies before signing the results.”
While the commission waited for the parties’ agents to check, she said, the EC would go ahead to publish the provisional results of the 90 constituencies.
She called for more time to be able to complete her work “creditably,” saying in “declaring the results, we must ensure accuracy.
“The duty we owed to the people of Ghana is not to declare results quickly, but that we declare results that reflect the wishes of the people.”
BY Melvin Tarlue