The Jean Mensah-led Electoral Commission has directed the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) to table its proposed electoral reforms before the Interparty Advisory Committee (IPAC) for dialogue.
The Commission said it is open to suggestions and feedback to enhance the country’s electoral process but insists IPAC is the appropriate forum for such suggestions.
The directive was after the EC took delivery of the NDC’s proposals.
“We don’t deal with individual parties, and IPAC is designed to promote multi-party views, so IPAC is the right forum for such discussion.
“So we responded to their proposals and asked the party to bring it to IPAC,” it said.
The Commission further explained the decision to ask the NDC to table its suggestion before IPAC was arrived at during a top Management meeting over the suggestions.
But the EC also observed that some of the suggestions captured in the NDC’s proposal go beyond its mandate.
It argued that, “there are some of the issues which are constitutional matters and that would require constitutional amendments and execution from the executive arm of government.”
Some of the issues the Commission listed as not being part of their mandate include, among others.
1. Specially-designated courts should be appointed exclusively for electoral disputes and offences before, during and after registration of voters and elections.
2. Split the EC into two separate bodies, namely an Office for the Regulation of Political Parties (ORPP) and an Electoral Commission (EC) by amending the Political Parties Act, 2000, Act 574.
3. Provide for prior parliamentary approval for the appointment of EC members.
But the commission, says the suggestions which have a direct nexus on their operations would be looked at.
“The Electoral Commission always wants to be the best, and so we are for anything that would enhance the electoral process.
“When the NDC finally submits its electoral reforms to IPAC, we will look at the issues holistically and decide on them.”
The Commission added, “Regional collation centres in our own estimations were good, and that would have been continued-nevertheless if there’s an opportunity to improve, it would be available to do so.”
The Ghanaian Politician and Former Minister of Youth and sports, Hon. Elvis Ankrah Afriyie reveals the so-called Achievement and Proposed Reforms by the EC in her speech at IPAC.
According to the Ghanaian Politician of the NDC, we have taken note of some proposals for reforms that the Electoral Commission has put forward for the consideration of IPAC. However, the first and most important reform required is for the EC to reform itself. Jean Mensa and Bossman Asare must be the first to reform and change their attitude of arrogance and bias.
Ladies and gentlemen of the media, I will now proceed to do a critical and objective analysis of the four (4) reform proposals put forward by the EC.
So-called Proposed Reforms
So-called Proposed Reforms
1. Closure of polls at 3 pm in 2024
Ladies and gentlemen of the media, the NDC finds the proposal by the Jean Mensah-led EC to change the closing time of polls from 5 PM to 3 PM in 2024 baffling and mind-boggling. Since the 1992 elections, polls have always closed at 5 PM. This has worked perfectly without any challenges whatsoever. It, therefore, beggars belief that the EC would want to change this time-tested arrangement and go for a poorly thought-through alternative which is bound to disenfranchise eligible voters and create needless problems for our electoral system.
This is particularly so given the undue delay we usually record in the delivery of electoral materials to some polling stations and other technical challenges that usually characterize voting in this country.
Ghanaians will recall how a similar hasty decision by the EC to declare results within 24 hours after closure of polls in the 2020 elections failed miserably and led to the rushed declaration of a patently flawed results that yielded a percentage aggregate of more than 100%, by the Returning Officer, Mr. Jean Adukwei Mensah. One would have thought that Jean Mensah would have learnt the right lessons by now but that appears not to be the case.
Friends form the media, our position on this proposal is simple. The current arrangement of closing polls at 5 PM has worked perfectly in seven (7) general elections in this country and does not require any fixing. Like the Chairperson said in her speech, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.
2. Substitution of periodic mass registration with continuous registration.
We wish to remind the Electoral Commission that the all-round continuous registration of eligible voters is not new. The law requires the Commission to put in place mechanisms to ensure that at any time that citizens become eligible to vote, they can be registered.
However, continuous registration cannot be a substitute for periodic nationwide registration because the all-round registration can only be done at the district offices of the Electoral Commission. Eligible voters may have to travel several kilometers to district offices to register and not everyone can do this.
Secondly, political parties always assign agents to observe the voters registration process. It will therefore be ludicrous for the EC to suggest that political parties should employ permanent agents at their district offices to observe the registration of eligible voters all year round.
This proposal also comes against a major challenge of transparency in verifying the claims of prospective registrants at the district office level.
3. Introducing an all-year-round Voter Exhibition exercise through the use of technology.
The proposal by EC to have a year-round exhibition is a laudable idea but cannot be a substitute for the periodic exhibition exercise of the voters register that is normally done after voter registration. This is simply because the Voter exhibition exercise is not only intended to afford voters the opportunity to verify and confirm their details but to also;
a) ensure ineligible registrants (minors and foreigners) are challenged and removed from the register.
b) help clean the names of dead people from the register.
C) afford voters the opportunity to confirm their captured biometric features.
And this cannot be achieved through the system the EC is proposing.
Given the errors that occurred in the run-up to the 2020 elections when this system was deployed and the fact that not all Ghanaians have mobile phones to assess this system, it cannot be a replacement for periodic Voters Register Exhibition.
4. Restrict data entry of election results to the constituency collation level and generate regional and national reports.
The proposal to have the entry point of data done only at Constituency Collation Centres will introduce another opportunity for rigging through hacking and other means of manipulation of the results. The way to build further efficiencies into the collation process and eliminate inaccuracies is to hire and train competent EC staff to ensure accurate data entry and collation and not to throw away the time-tested practice of collation at the national level.
Data entry and collation must be done at constituency level and sent to the national collation center for aggregation by the Returning Officer and with the participation of political party representatives. This will ensure accuracy and transparency in the aggregation of constituency results for free and fair election results declaration.
Former Minister of Youth and Sports Reveals the So-Called Proposed Reforms by EC
The Ghanaian Politician and Former Minister of Youth and sports, Hon. Elvis Ankrah Afriyie reveals the so-called Achievement and Proposed Reforms by the EC in her speech at IPAC.
The NDC has taken notice of several false claims made by the chairperson of the Electoral Commission Mrs. Jean Adukwei Mensah in her speech delivered at the just-ended two (2)-day workshop between the EC and the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) at Alisa Hotel in Accra.
According to Hon. Afriyie, the purpose of this press conference is to formally respond to and expose the many unfounded claims peddled by the EC Chairperson in her speech at the program and to explain to you the reasons for our boycott of these IPAC engagements.
Friends from the media, contrary to the claims by the EC Chairperson that the 2020 general elections was the best ever in the history of this country and calls for the nation to celebrate some so-called unprecedented successes chalked by the EC in the conduct of the elections, the facts show that last year’s elections was one of the most poorly conducted, flawed and manipulated elections in the history of this country, a situation that has undermined the strides we have made since the inception of this 4th republican democratic dispensation. And we say this for the following reasons:
Former Minister of Youth and Sports Reveals the So-Called Proposed Reforms by EC
Former Minister of Youth and Sports Reveals the So-Called Proposed Reforms by EC
1. The dubious handling of the printing and distribution of ballot papers and other electoral materials that led to ballot stuffing by the NPP in their strongholds and other regions.
2. The unprecedented number of rejected ballots recorded in the elections owing largely to the incompetence and recklessness of the EC in using unapproved stamp pads instead of the approved voting ink pad that we have used in previous elections.
3. The use of illegal Statement of Polls/pink sheets (Form 8B) that omitted BVD entries in about 7,581 polling stations, thereby undermining the ballot accounting process and the integrity of the entire results. This totally belies the the claim by Jean Mensah that only 11,000 people voted by manual verification in the 2020 general elections.
4. Widespread cases of patent arithmetic errors on the faces of pink sheets and constituency results summary sheets by incompetent EC staff in the filling of electoral forms and aggregation of valid votes.
5. Manipulation of figures by the EC leading to a disparity between constituency collated results aggregate (13,118,640) and regional collated results aggregates (13,119,460).
6. Padding of votes at the constituency collation centers in favor of candidate Akufo-Addo.
7. No proper collation at the national collation center by the Returning Officer for the Presidential elections, Mrs. Jean Adukwei Mensah.
8. Unprecedented cases of state-sponsored violence and killings at constituency collation centers occasioned by the reckless and unlawful conduct of some EC officials and the despotic Akufo-Addo government and in contravention of our time-tested election security arrangement.
9. Also contrary to the claim that the International community has hailed the conduct of the 2020 general elections as Jean Mensah will have us believe, the European Union is on record to have decried the non-transparency of the collation process for the elections. So flawed was the conduct of the 2020 general elections that for the first time in the history of this country, a whole district made up of the Satrokofi, Akpafu, Likpe, and Lolobi (SALL) communities were deliberately disenfranchised by the EC for the sole purpose of assisting the New Patriotic Parliamentary Candidate, John Peter Amewu win the Hohoe seat. Is this what Jean Mensa and her bias Commission is inviting us to celebrate?
Former Minister of Youth and Sports Reveals the So-Called Proposed Reforms by EC
11. Again, the claim by the EC that an amount of $90 million was saved in the conduct of the 2020 general elections is completely contrived. The facts show that the state incurred avoidable financial losses as a result of the procurement of a facial recognition technology by the EC that turned out as a fiasco.
It is therefore ridiculous and laughable to say the least, that an Electoral Management Body that has failed to pay its temporary staff their allowances, five (5) months after an election will make the claim that they have saved the nation money. We wish to entreat the public to treat this baseless claim with the contempt it deserves and wait for a credible audit into the EC’s expenditure for the 2020 general elections.
Former Minister of Youth and Sports Reveals the So-Called Proposed Reforms by EC
Executive Director of the Institute of Democratic Governance (IDEG) Dr. Emmanuel Akwetey has criticized the Electoral Commission (EC) for failing to reach consensus and collaborations with the political parties at the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meetings prior to the elections.
Dr. Akwetey noted that at the moment the IPAC has broken down, otherwise, he said, the committee should have been able to deal with issues that are emerging from the just-ended presidential and parliamentary elections.
He made these comments while speaking on TV3’s Key Points programme on Saturday, December 19.
His comments come on the heels of the refusal of the Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) John Dramani Mahama to accept the results of the elections, a situation that has thrown supporters of the party onto the streets across the country to agitate against the elections management body.
Mr. Mahama claimed that the EC manipulated the results in favour of the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo hence, his inability to accept the results.
But Dr. Akwetey told host of the Key Points Abena Tabi that “I think that so far, we have had mechanisms, the IPAC was important in getting the parties to come to some consensus and to collaborate with the EC.
“There were times that their agreements led to reforms. The compilation of a new elections register, for instance, the introduction of biometric system in voter registration came from an IPAC discussion and an agreement between the parties.
“All the reforms that we have had in elections which have been written in law came through the IPAC and the agreements that the parties reached. So in that case, I think that the situation that we are facing today, a lot of it has to do with how the EC did not manage the IPAC process.
“For collaborations or consensus it takes time and the fact that as we speak now consensus and deliberations have broken down at the IPAC level.”
