Festus Matey, GSL SRC candidate, admits allegations of rigging the 2023 GIMPA election

Festus Tettey Matey, one of five presidential candidates in the upcoming Ghana School of Law (GSL) Students Representative Council (SRC) elections, has admitted to engaging in election malpractice and rigging when he contested for the position of LSA president in 2023 at the GIMPA Law School.

Festus Tettey Matey contested the Law Students Association (LSA) presidential election at the GIMPA Law School in 2023 and was elected president, but his election, together with several other executives, was annulled, and the GIMPA Law School prohibited him and all other elected executives from holding themselves out as such.

As part of his engagements with his colleague, part one GSL students and seniors in part two, ahead of the SRC elections, Festus Tettey Matey has openingly admitted the rigging of the 2023 GIMPA Law School LSA election but refutes claims that he was removed from office as the the GIMPA LSA president.

*The Petition*

His main contender in the annulled election, Maxwell Adu Takyi, filed a petition against the LSA Electoral Commission, the LSA’s legal advisor, Festus Tettey Matey, and all the other candidates who contested for positions such as Vice President, secretary, and treasurer in the 2023 LSA election.

The petitioner, Maxwell Adu Takyi, essentially accused the Law Students Association (LSA) Electoral Commission of collaborating with Festus Tettey Matey and his entire campaign team to put together and implement a systematic plan that resulted in the rigging of the 2023 LSA election, which was held on 2 June 2023.

Following the petition, the Dean of the GIMPA Law School, Dr Kwaku Agyeman-Budu, instituted a three-member inter-faculty committee to review the petition and to investigate the allegations leveled against Festus Tettey Matey and the LSA Electoral Commission.

*Committee findings*

The three-member committee, chaired by Dr Augustina Akonnor, Dean of Student Affairs, with Rev Dr. William Adjei, Senior Lecturer GIMPA Law School, and Dr Joseph Badu, Senior Lecturer, School of Technology, as members, after conducting their investigations, established that Festus Matey rigged the LSA election and the same should be annulled.

“Consequently, the committee concludes as follows: First, during the hearing, the EC Representative was unable to provide the requested evidence, which affected the credibility of their claim that the election was free and fair.

“The representative rather gave excuses to justify the absence of the requested evidence. For instance, he said the systems report was unavailable because the election software vendor had destroyed the data since he had no more contract with the Commission.

“The systems report would have helped this committee compare and verify the election results directly generated by the system and those declared by the Electoral Commission as displayed in an editable Microsoft Word document projected on the wall of the “strong room,” the committee report read.

“The situation we faced was like a paper-based election without ‘pink sheets.” Further, the audit trail would have helped this committee to verify the allegations of the system’s outage during the election exercise. This verification is important because the system’s outage is further linked to
two allegations:

a. That the system was deliberately hacked to prevent further voting so that the election results will be declared as is, in favour of one of the candidates.

b. That the presidential election results were swapped to disadvantage the losing candidate. Hence, we could have verified the electorate’s choices – albeit anonymously,” the committee report further read.

To clarify their findings, the committee stated in their report that “neither the election software nor its developer was available for demonstration and questioning, respectively. The committee would have run through the software by undertaking a typical vote and then generating a report to understand its algorithm.

“Our inability to achieve this casts doubts on the inner workings of the algorithm, especially because some of the candidates did not have the
opportunity to conduct a pre-election audit of the software – whether deliberately or accidentally,

“On the technical difficulties the committee faced with accessing the software, its audit trail and the voting data, we suggest a lack of transparency in the electoral process, which casts a doubt on the election
Results,” the committee report concluded.

*Depraved record*

With this record at the faculty level, when he was pursuing his law degree (LLB), several Ghana School of Law students are questioning Festus Tetteh Matey’s candidature and credibility in the upcoming GSL SRC elections.

Festus Tetteh Matey, after declaring his intent to contest in the Ghana School of Law SRC election, has leveraged on his friendship with other lawyers and his strong association with the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to organize tutorial sessions for all interested students, mostly on weekends.

Matey has also taken it upon himself to supply microwaves to some GSL campuses. He is largely seen as receiving direct sponsorship from the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC).