NPP-Canada has learnt with dismay a recent decision by the Electoral Commission (EC) of Ghana to appoint a so-called Steering Committee for the Commission. Whilst NPP-Canada does not deny the constitutional right of the EC to establish a Steering Committee (SC) for whatever purpose it may deem appropriate, it is nonetheless disturbed by just about every aspect of this SC.
What NPP-Canada finds not only disturbing but frankly potentially complicit the manner by which some individuals found themselves on this SC.
As is done as a standard evaluation measure with just about most if not all integrity-seeking processes, applicants or potential nominees (as the case may be) would be required to complete a Questionnaire. In the case of appointment or nomination to the now-infamous Steering Committee, such a Questionnaire could have posed a nominee the question: “Has the nominee ever been an active or card-bearing member of a political party in the past two years?” If later found out that a nominee had provided a false answer, such a nominee would have been deemed to have committed perjury, an indictable offense.
By such a measure as outlined above, the EC would at least have been seen to have done some minimal due diligence. But as it turned out, the EC shockingly made no such a provision to ensure due diligence and NEUTRALITY. Considering that the EC deliberately did not discuss this SC establishment with the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC), what is to deny that the EC deliberately let the nomination process to be so lax as to have allowed at least one known activist of the Party of President Mahama to have found himself as a member of the SC?
Not too long ago, Madam Charlotte Osei (EC Chairperson) was quoted as saying “Is John Mahama my friend? No. I have met him in the course of work. Have I met Nana Addo? Yes. He actually is my friend…but I do know both of them.”
What message was Madam Osei trying to convey by the above? Or better still, what is it that she appears to be at such pains to conceal? What if Nana Addo had also come out to say he had only met Madam Osei in the course of work and she was not a friend as she so eagerly and desperately tried to convey? What would that have done to her credibility? Or what if a source at Jubilee House had revealed that Madam Osei knows President Mahama a lot more than she was letting on publicly?
As the Head of the EC, the Ghanaian people are not interested in who your friends are but in the neutrality with which you approach your role. Let your deeds and not words vindicate your neutrality. Thus far, you are not doing a terribly good job at either.
Then there was the rather outrageous comment by Madam Charlotte Osei that the Ashanti Region had engaged in some over 200,000 multiple voter registrations. Of course Madam Osei came back hours, if not days later, to say that she had been wrong with her Arithmetic and that the number was actually 14,651 and not the whopping 200,000 she had earlier claimed. The admission of error on the part of Madam Osei was commendable. What NPP-Canada finds as not commendable was why she felt she had to make such an unsolicited remark in the first place about one particular Region concerning multiple registrations.
All that the Ghanaian People have paced themselves for is a Free, Fair and Credible Elections. Adequate consultations with IPAC would go a long way to position the EC right in the view of the Ghanaian People. Beware of so-called institutional representation as some of these institutions are infested with so-called “jobs for the boys” and may not be the best show of impartiality in a National Election where the EC’s neutrality and impartiality cannot be negotiable. When it comes to institutional representation, the key phrase should be “Trust but Verify” (apologies to President Ronald Reagan).
Please Slow Down, Madam Osei. A Word to the Wise should be enough.
—signed—
Gilbert Adu Gyimah
Director of Communications, NPP/Canada
NPPCanada@outlook.com
www.nppcanada.org
Tel: 587-708-9915 / 647-800-3585
