John Mahama and Jean Mensa
The Electoral Commission (EC) has asked former President John Dramani Mahama to stop denigrating members of the Commission.
According to the EC, Mr. Mahama, who is staging a comeback for the presidency “has never missed an opportunity to denigrate” the Commission.
The comments come after the NDC flagbearer alleged during an interview at the London School of Economics and Political Science the government had appointed NPP people onto the Electoral Commission.
Mr. Mahama is also said to have accused the EC of a move to recruit NPP apparatchiks as Returning Officers.
“Recently, there was an announcement of recruitment of returning officers, and the information we have is that ministers and DCEs (District Chief Executives) and others were asked to write the names of party apparatchik and present them so that they would be appointed as the returning officers. Are these people going to be neutral?”
But the EC, in a response, said the allegations are not only false but they are also unfounded.
“The Commission rejects this unfounded allegation coming from the former President. The process of recruiting Returning Officers and their Deputies was conducted in an open, fair and transparent manner,” the EC said in a statement.
The statement, signed by the Deputy Director of Research, Monitoring and Evaluation, Fred Tetteh, said following a publication of the vacancy announcement in the dailies, the Commission received a total of 20,561 applications.
“An in-house Committee was established to shortlist suitable applicants to be interviewed. For the information of the general public, all successful applicants at the interview have no less than 8 years working experience with the Commission as Temporal Election Officials,” the statement explained.
Innovation
On the issue of innovations introduced to provide Ghana one of the best electoral processes in Africa, the Commission stated that Mr. Mahama seemed to forget that Ghana’s electoral processes have historically improved with each election cycle.
“Indeed, for most voters who have had voting experiences under the 4ht Republic, the 2020 elections provided the best voting experience, with shorter queues and an even shorter time spent going through the voting process.
“Additionally, the Commission reduced the cost of election from $13 to $7.70 per person and saved the nation a whopping US$90 million. For the first time in the history of the country, the election was fully funded by the Government of Ghana,” the EC asserted.
The statement continued that Article 43(2) of the Constitution provides that, “The members of the Commission shall be appointed by the President under Article 70 of this Constitution.” “The former President questioned the neutrality of the person he appointed. There were also Ghanaians who equally accused [ex-] President Mahama at the time of appointing persons with NDC sympathies to the Commission.
“What was different then is that other Ghanaian political leaders did not use every opportunity they got to demonise and denigrate the Electoral Commission as a result of their reservations about President Mahama’s appointment to the Commission,” the statement pointed out.
According to the Commission, it also succeeded in registering 17 million persons in 38 days in a COVID-19 environment and during a rainy season.
“No wonder all observer groups, including the EU, AU, ECOWAS and numerous Ghanaians lauded the conduct of the 2020 elections as transparent and efficiently run.
“It is not surprising that the former President of Liberia, H.E. Johnson Sirleaf asked African countries to emulate the exemplary elections of Ghana.
“Any suggestions that improvements in our electoral processes ended in 2016 are not borne by the facts, and seems part of the continual efforts to discredit the Commission in order to perpetuate the false narrative about the Commission,” EC stated.
By Ernest Kofi Adu