A group of seven civil society organisations (CSOs) in Ghana has accused the country’s electoral umpire of failing to conduct free and fair 2020 presidential election.
The CSOs have petitioned Head of Foreign Missions in Ghana over what they described as misrepresentation of election results and the killing of voters.
The group of petitioners include Anchoring Democracy Advocacy Movement Ghana (ADAM-GH), Care for Free and Fair Elections Ghana, CFF-Ghana, Democratic Credentials Network Ghana, Back Bone of Good Governance, African Centre for Health Policy Research and Analysis (ACH-PRA) and Grassroots Mobilisers Network.
The Electoral Commission (EC) declared incumbent President Nana Addo Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) winner of the 07 December election.
Akufo-Addo received 51.3 percent of the vote to defeat his predecessor, John Dramani Mahama, of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
The former president got 47.3 percent of the vote and has said he will contest the results, as he accused the electoral umpire of presiding over a ‘fraudulent outcome’.
Election observers reported violent incidents in the Ashanti, Central, and Greater Accra regions, with police saying they had recorded over 60 incidents on polling day.
In a joint statement, the seven CSOs claimed the electoral commissioners failed to conduct free and fair polls in Ghana especially due to certain unilateral decisions taken by the commission without consultation with key stakeholders.
They also said the EC did not effectively utilise the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC), which is a platform for consensus building, during matters of electoral issues.
‘The processes leading to the 7th December, 2020 elections were characterised with some irregularities that gave an undue advantage to the NPP and a platform to manipulate the electoral processes’, the petition read.
‘This led to some disagreements between the Electoral Commission on one side, some CSOs and opposition political parties on the other side.
‘The chronology of events dictated an attempt by the EC to manipulate the 2020 election.
‘This commenced with the compilation of the new voters register which was met with stiff opposition. CSOs and the Inter Party Resistance against New Voter Register made up of minority political parties raised concerns about the EC’s decision to change the existing Biometric Voter Register that, according to the EC’s own words, was credible.
‘As part of the reasons adduced by the EC for the need for a new register were over-bloating, ghost names on the register, names of minors and foreigners among others’.
They also said, ‘Before going for the new registration, our total voter population, according to the EC, stood at 16,845,439 registered voters. By the completion of the new registration exercise and the exhibition exercise, the voter population now stands at 17,007,026’.
The group accused the EC of deliberately preventing people from accessing registration centres and those in queues were physically removed in an attempt to prevent them from registering and subsequently participating in the elections.
However, a journalist and appointee of the government, Paul Adom-Otchere defended the commission.
Adom-Otchere said there was nothing wrong with the figures mentioned by the Chairperson of the EC, Jean Mensa, during the announcement.
‘A lot has been said about the declaration. The issue about the declaration is that in presenting the result, Jean Mensa did not make the case for the difference between the total votes and total valid votes cast as being a difference between the total votes cast and rejected ballots’, Adom-Otchere said.
‘So the figures she gave were not wrong. There was nothing wrong with the figures. It was the presentation that she had wrong’.
Source: Modern Ghana
Photo source: Commonwealth Secretariat
