Jean Mensa Is No Afari-Gyan, Trust Me

When he mounted the dock in the 2012 Presidential-Election Petition Trial, filed at the Supreme Court of Ghana by then-Candidates Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and Mahamudu Bawumia, and the late Mr. Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey, the then National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party, the extant Chairperson of Ghana’s Electoral Commission (EC), Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, categorically admitted, amidst profuse sweating in the airconditioned courtroom, that he had, indeed, knowingly allowed underage and ineligible minor Ghanaian citizens to register and criminally exercise the franchise. For 20-odd years, the former Political Science Lecturer of the University of Ghana also sheepishly acknowledged that there had been forensically provable cases of “Overvoting,” which meant that in a remarkable number of constituencies and polling stations, perhaps even in each and every polling station across the country, more people had been allowed to vote by the extant Electoral Commissioner and his executive staff associates and employees than had been registered in the hundreds of thousands of constituencies.

Even more significant was the fact that while, indeed, overvoting may have occurred in constituencies and polling stations located in the electoral strongholds of both the then-ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the then main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), there was solid foolproof evidence indicating that the high incidence of overvoting had been deliberately tilted or skewed in favor of the National Democratic Congress. Equally significant, the University of Ghana- and the University of California-trained Dr. Afari-Gyan criminally prevaricated on the stand, by also asserting, quite curiously, that he sincerely did not know and could not prove the fact of whether, indeed, either overvoting or undervoting had occurred under his watch as Ghana’s first Fourth Republican-appointed Electoral Commissioner.

The fact that Dr. Afari-Gyan, who had been appointed to his post as EC’s Chairperson for some 20-odd years, would display such gross administrative incompetence and downright professional irresponsibility, ought to inform all lovers of clean democratic elections that for more than two decades Ghanaians had been blessed with every aspect of a democratic political culture except a credible National Voters’ Register and, thus, a clean election or a clean electoral process. It is because of this reason why the leadership of the National Democratic Congress cannot be taken seriously, when they mischievously assert that making the digitized Ghana Citizenship Identification Card, or Ghana Card, the sole source or criterion for exercising the franchise in the upcoming 2024 General Election would be tantamount to disenfranchising at least three-million eligible voters and Ghanaian citizens (See “Voter Registration: Use of Only Ghana Card Will Eliminate Minors, Foreigners – EC” Modernghana.com 9/8/22).

Well, as it is to be expected, Mrs. Jean Adukwei Mensa and her staff of first-rate administrators have already done the math, as it were, and arrived at the forensically foolproof conclusion that it is highly unlikely for any bona fide Ghanaian citizen who qualifies to exercise their franchise to be denied the same come December 7, or thereabouts, 2024, when Ghanaians flock to the polling booth to decide which political party and presidential candidate gets to manage the people’s business affairs for the next four years. According to Mr. Samuel Tettey, the Deputy Chairperson of Ghana’s Independent Electoral Commission in Charge of Operations, approximately 60-percent of all Ghanaians who registered to vote in the 2020 General Election had used the Ghana Card as the sole source of identification and the authentication of their citizenship and voter eligibility status.

The IEC’s Deputy Chairperson for Operations also adds that: “We are reliably informed that over 17 million Ghanaians have registered for the [Ghana] card as of last month [ i.e., August], and about 16 million Ghana cards have already been issued.” Mrs. Mensa, that is, the IEC’s substantive Chairperson, also notes, authoritatively, that between now and the 2024 General Election, at least two-million newly qualified voters – largely teenagers who just turned 18 years old – would have had their names and statistical details promptly and legitimately added to the currently existing Biometric National Voters’ Register (NBVR). “Anyone who turns 18 simply has to walk to the district office of the Commission where that person wants to vote and register as a voter,” the former member of the late President John Evans Atta-Mills-established Constitution Review Commission noted.

So far, none of the most acerbic critics of the Jean Mensa-headed Independent Electoral Commission from among the vanguard leadership of the the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress have come public, in the wake of the IEC Chairperson’s press conference address to contradict her vis-à-vis the fact of whether or not, indeed, 16 million Ghana Cards have been issued to qualified members of the general public by the Prof. Kenneth Attafuah-headed National Identification Authority (NIA), or the fact of whether over 17 million Ghanaians have registered to vote as of the end of this just past month of August.

The pathologically petulant and convulsively belligerent leaders of the National Democratic Congress have yet to forensically prove beyond any reasonable iota or shadow of doubt, precisely how they arrived at their characteristically fabricated figure of at least three-million eligible Ghanaian citizens risking the likelihood of being summarily disenfranchised by the IEC’s unimpeachable decision to permit the use of the Ghana Card as the sole source of Voter ID in the 2024 General Election. As has historically always been the case, there are the politically progressive kosher leadership of the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party who would take Ghana to new healthy technologically progressive ways of doing things, and then, of course, there are also the self-serving pathologically self-serving neoconservative Luddites of the “lootocratic” faux-socialist establishment of the National Democratic Congress who would have the nation stand still and be wantonly and permanently and endlessly to subjected to the sort of thievery that finds the nation perennially unable to meet its balance of payment obligations.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

September 10, 2022

E-mail: [email protected]