Editor-in-Chief of the New Crusading Guide newspaper, Abdul Malik Kweku Baako Jnr, says all factors point to the fact that the just-ended general election was free, fair, and transparent.
“The EC’s position was that this election was free, fair, and transparent. Indeed, they have been. I have heard CODEO make observations, their reports are here. I have heard the European Union observers make their case.
“All of them come to a certain conclusion, the process was free and was fair, indeed transparent,” he stated.
In an interview, he also praised the processes and equipment procured by the EC, saying “the PVDs worked efficiently. The efficacy of the new technology was vindicated.
“The reason there weren’t many queues was because of the efficiency of the biometric voter machine. Majority of them worked.”
Reacting to the claim of the presidential candidate of the National Democratic Congress, John Dramani Mahama, describing the declared results as “fictionalized and flawed”, Mr. Baako indicated that, the laws governing the country makes provision for such cases to be settled in the Court of Law hence, advised that John Mahama and his party to seek redress in that manner.
He added that former President Mahama has been a ‘beneficiary’ of a similar instance in the 2012 election petition.
“That is his opinion, he is entitled to it but fortunately, he knows what to do. He can go to court, we all saw what happened. Indeed, that experience has informed the improvement and progress we have made in our election architecture,” he noted.
In the same interview, the Vice President of IMANI Africa, Kofi Bentil praised the Electoral Commission for doing what its mandated by law to do and also admonished Ghanaians to do same.
He however noted that the election was put at risk because the EC insisted on the usage of new equipments.
He also indicated that, the issues that arose during and after the elections showed “a certain institutional lapse. It is not excusable that today, political parties with fewer resources are putting up electronic collation systems; this is arithmetic.
“By now we should have been applying the new money that the EC will be getting in putting up a proper election collation center, whereas the figures come in and they are certified, they are put up there and then we will not have simple arithmetic mistakes like the one we had, which is now throwing everything up.”
Projects Manager for Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO), Rhoda Afful also in the same interview said the “internal pressure” the EC gave itself by disclosing its intensions of declaring the results of the election after 24hours of the close of polls was uncalled for.
She said no law binds the Commission to declare results of an election by a stipulated time but rather, the Commission is to declare it once it has received, certified and collated the results from the various polling stations.
“The most important thing is that you were going to declare the results as soon as they were available so that internal pressure they put themselves under was unfortunate.”
