Charlotte Osei – EC Boss
It has overshadowed all the scandals recorded at the summit of our democracy in recent times. The self-destruct mode the Electoral Commission (EC) top echelons have activated is as revealing as it is telling.
It differs from most scandals in the fact that the self-destruct button was pressed by the person at the helm of the elections management system in the country. The following responses from the Charlotte-accused deputies have muddied the waters further. The situation has triggered a national conversation which is nowhere being outdone by any on the political chart.
We are beginning to think that somebody does not want to go down alone but would do so with others – a preference which is doing more harm to the integrity of the EC than it is good for our democracy.
By the time the process of self-immolation, as it were, is over, only God knows how many persons would remain standing in EC. If there was any semblance of deference remaining on the name of the EC, same has evaporated with the pressing of the self-destruct button.
Whether they saw it, loved it and ready to defend the rot at the EC, the NDC must be licking their wounds now – their untenable defence of the indefensible now a source of public ridicule.
Now that the leadership of the election management system is washing its dirty linen in the public space, the NDC has already adopted ‘the silence’ is golden axiom in a manner which leaves us with no option than to conclude that they have learnt a lesson the hard way.
The EC story is multifaceted. The NDC segment was of paramount interest to the public who found the spirited defence from the political grouping rather weird.
It is a brouhaha from which many lessons are being learnt about how all that glittered about the EC’s integrity was not after all gold. Indeed beneath the veneer was a rot, the magnitude of which are just beginning to be spewed by the Chairperson and her lieutenants as they reach for each other’s jugular.
If she is being asked to defend her integrity by a near-deafening public outcry and her immediate reaction is to impugn the images of her main deputies, the conclusion can only be reached that the Commission is embroiled in an unusual moral debacle from which there is no recovery.
It is not for us to tell the President what to do under such circumstances but we think we can remind him to play his part and well as the petition lands on his desk. Anything short of this can be injurious to our democracy.
The EC head has spoken and has inadvertently established the fact that Kofi Portuphy, NDC National Chairman and Haruna Iddrisu did not just understand the subject. Had they done so they would not have gone on that irritating tangent. Now the chicks have come home to roost and the chips of the picture no longer distorted.
On the need for a thorough forensic auditing of the operations of the EC vis a vis the allegations being traded, there cannot be a compromise.