Former President John Mahama
FORMER PRESIDENT John Mahama appears to have backtracked on his call on political parties not to attack the Electoral Commission (EC).
Reacting to the change of logo of the EC by then chairperson of the commission, Charlotte Osei, when he was President, Mr. Mahama could not fathom why some political parties at the time were ‘attacking’ the EC.
He wondered why “some parties had made it a penchant to continuously attack the Electoral Commission for reasons he could not understand.”
“This is a time when we need to give the Electoral Commission peace to do its work … every little thing they are at the Electoral Commission and they are attacking the commission,” he said in the run-up to the December 7, 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections.
“Recently it was brouhaha over a logo. I mean how a logo can affect the quality of election in this country. I don’t think it’s a discourse we need to be splitting heads on. I believe that our Electoral Commission continues to be one of the most experienced and the best not in Africa but in the world and has delivered very successful elections in the past,” he added.
Distractions
Interestingly, in recent times, Mr. Mahama and his party appear to be interfering with the work of the EC.
In December 2019, while speaking at a stakeholders’ engagement with members of the Christian Council, Mr. Mahama, who is leading the NDC into the 2020 elections, questioned the need for the 21-member Eminent Advisory Committee.
Besides, the NDC is leading five other political parties to protest against the EC’s decision to compile a new voter register.
Press Conference
Come January 6, 2020, the NDC and its surrogates are billed to organize a press conference under the theme: “Inter-Party Resistance against New Voter Register”, with the hashtag #DropTheNewRegister.
New Voters Register Coming
The EC has stated that the compilation of a new voters register was indispensable.
About GH¢400 million has been approved by Parliament for the EC to carry out the exercise.
The Deputy Chairperson of the commission in charge of Operations, Samuel Tettey, who disclosed this to journalists in Accra recently, said the amount would be used mainly for procuring electoral materials as well as recruiting election officials for all polling stations across the country.
He said the voters register as it stood currently, was bloated because there had not been any effective means of cleaning it after eight years of use.
Credibility Issues
According to him, “using such a periodic replacement register for subsequent election(s) will greatly affect the credibility of the election(s).”
The deputy chairperson also indicated that a bloated register increased the cost of elections. He highlighted that the commission always procured election materials based on the number of registered voters.
“This causes a lot of waste as the number of registered voters exceeds the actual voters,” he said.
BY Melvin Tarlue & Jamila Akweley Okertchiri