The Executive Director of the Institute of Democratic Governance (IDEG), Dr. Emmanuel Akwetey has called out the Electoral Commission (EC) for failing to reach consensus and collaborating with the political parties at the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meetings leading to the just-ended elections.
Dr. Akwetey indicated that currently, the IPAC is not functioning, otherwise, he said, the committee should have been able to resolve issues that are surfacing as a result of the just-ended general elections.
His comments come on the heels of the refusal of the Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Dramani Mahama to accept the results of the elections, a situation that has thrown supporters of the party onto the streets across the country in demonstrating against the Electoral Commission on what they call “the stolen verdict.”
Mr. Mahama claimed that the EC skewed the results to favour the incumbent President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo hence, his inability to accept the results.
Dr. Akwetey in an interview noted that, “I think that so far, we have had mechanisms, the IPAC was important in getting the parties to come to some consensus and to collaborate with the EC.
“There were times that their agreements led to reforms. The compilation of a new elections register for instance, the introduction of a biometric system in voter registration came from an IPAC discussion and an agreement between the parties.
“All the reforms that we have had in elections which have been written in law came through the IPAC and the agreements that the parties reached. So in that case, I think that the situation that we are facing today, a lot of it has to do with how the EC did not manage the IPAC process.
“For collaborations or consensus it takes time and the fact that as we speak now, consensus and deliberations have broken down at the IPAC level.”
Subsequently, the General Secretary of the NDC, Johnson Aseidu Nketia has also registered his disappointment in the manner with which IPAC meeting were handled by the EC prior elections.
He emphasized that IPAC meetings are grounds for consensus building between stakeholders of elections and the election management body hence, requires a two-way communication process not a one-way communication model, what he described as the case.
“When she started to abandon the peacebuilding mechanisms within our electoral process and we were talking, everybody was urging her on and we said this will create a problem. You cannot abandon the IPAC process and hope to have peaceful elections at the end of it, you will make mistakes. She reduced IPAC to one-way information giving forum instead of a consensus-building forum.
“I stop attending IPAC for more than a year before the elections because I felt that it was not worth it. I will not go there for the purpose of sharing ideas about how to proceed and you will come and impose things on me, and get out there to announce on radio that this was the outcome of a meeting. I cannot be part of it,” he stated.
