EC Should Stop The Crap

This is not the time for the Electoral Commission (EC) to emit negative signals about its already battered integrity.

The information making the rounds on the political terrain is that the commission deliberately waited for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to go into a vetting mode before it commenced a voter transfer exercise.

Yesterday a statement from the NPP did not take kindly to the decision to organize the voter transfer exercise and asked that it be ceased since the political parties were not duly informed.

With Kwadwo Afari-Gyan on his terminal leave never to return to the office again, it is amazing that such inappropriate and eyebrow raising manouvres would be undertaken by a commission whose performance attracted queries at the hands of both the electorate and the Supreme Court.

The commission, which is yet to implement the reforms asked by the Supreme Court when it heard a petition from leading members of the NPP, appears to have forgotten same. It must remember the criticalness of redeeming its image.

One big hurdle the EC must surmount is regain the trust of Ghanaians. For now that trust has disappeared through the window. Undertaking exercises of this magnitude and significance without informing the various political parties and the country at large through the appropriate channels only feeds into the mistrust and creates unnecessary tension and suspicion between the commission and its critical publics.

We have passed through this road before and are in no mood to repeat it, given the outcome of the Supreme Court verdict on the election petition and the disappointment which followed it.

It is unfortunate that Ghanaians no longer have the necessary confidence in the judiciary to deliver justice in the face of election disputes when it involves the ruling party and the EC on one side and the others on the other.

In the absence of the judiciary as an arbiter in election disputes, the aggrieved would consider other options which are available to them, and this is dangerous. When a country reaches this state where it cannot count on the judiciary, it is dangerous for the EC to continue to provide ingredients for the enhancement of mistrust.

Information reaching us indicates that the man who is leading the suspicious charge is Amadu Sule, the man who is next to Kwadwo Afari-Gyan in the hierarchy. With this happening at a time when the search for a replacement for the outgoing EC chairman is on, Ghanaians cannot be comfortable.

If indeed Amadu Sule, the man discredited with all the bad things that happened in the last polls, is still the one driving the detestable manouvres, then Ghanaians have a question to pose about his integrity and what he really seeks to achieve by this underhand dealing at the EC.

Let those behind it all not take things for granted by continuing to think that Ghanaians would disregard the shortcomings and machinations of the EC indefinitely.

Underhand dealings in a place like the EC can lead to civil strife. We do not need such an avoidable situation here.