4 months ago
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The Electoral Commission has assured that it is putting measures in place to ensure that the December 7, 2024 polls are free, fair and transparent.
Chairperson of the Commission, Mrs Jean Mensa, told Parliament’s Committee of the Whole in Accra on Friday that just as her outfit has conducted transparent polls since 1992, this year’s highly anticipated one won’t be different.
• Mrs Jean Mensa
“From the registration to the declaration, our processes are embedded with one key ingredient, and that is transparency, transparency, transparency. As such we will continue to operate in the spirit of transparency, fairness and integrity as embedded in our motto,” she assured.
According to her, the basic duty of the Commission was to offer the electorate the platform to express their democratic will and not to choose for them who should be their leader.
The electoral structure of Ghana, she said, made it almost impossible for any officer of the Commission to determine where the pendulum swings.
She explained that the electoral body currently operated a system through which verified results, with respect to the presidential election from all 16 regions, were collated and transferred to the EC’s headquarters in Accra.
From the counting at the polling station to the collation and transfer to the regions for onward transmission to the national headquarters, Mrs Mensah said party agents were involved and furnished with copies of results as all stakeholders would have approved, making it impossible for any manipulation to take place.
The process, she ran the MPs through, starts with the counting of ballots at the polling stations in the full glare of the public after polls, and then to collation of same at the constituency collation centres before transfer to regional and subsequently national.
“A tabulation is done in their presence and then from there it goes to the regional collation centres where the agents of the parties are and then it comes to the national and it is not transmitted. It is hard copies of documents that are coming.
“So it is pink sheets that are scanned that are sent by fax and email that come through and we believe that by that time, the party should have copies of all these on their telephones to enable you to verify.”
With these rigorous processes done with the party agents, Mrs Mensa said it becomes almost impossible for any officer of the Commission to manipulate the numbers because representatives of the parties would have had the numbers even before they were transmitted to the national headquarters.
“So I like to assure you that there is absolutely no way that at the helm of affairs the commission can change anything because the documentation comes from the ground and we believe that you have copies,” she said.
Responding to questions of some missing biometric verification devices, the EC boss said the unaccounted for devices would not affect the integrity of the polls.
“With the BVDs, I think we have mentioned over time that what we lost were five laptops and that was realised during a routine maintenance. However, you know, we’ve taken steps to beef up our security in those places to ensure that, you know, such steps will not happen again. But I think we’ve assured you many times that it has no bearing. You know, the missing laptops have no bearing on the registration of the election.”
“Indeed, even if you assume that a BVR or a BVD was stolen, let’s assume because humans go there, they can be mischievous to carry the whole thing, they have to be activated. There are certain security processes that a BVD or a BVR has to go through to be connected to our system. And so on its own, it cannot be used to register anymore.”
Commissioners and staff of the elections management body, Mrs Mensah said were aware of the responsibility they have to ensure the will of the people reflected and won’t do otherwise.
“We accepted this job knowing that posterity will judge us and the almighty God will judge us so there’s no way that we are going to change the results when it is not the truth. We have integrity and credibility and we know that what we do will follow us all the way to the grave and we believe that we want the almighty God to honour us,” she added.
BY JULIUS YAO PETETSI
