The workload on the Electoral Commission has not lessened after the 2016 general elections, the Chairperson, Charlotte Osei has said.
The Commission and its Chairperson were in the spotlight prior to Ghana’s seventh successive election, but not much work is expected of them now that the election is over.
But the Chairperson of the Commission, Charlotte Osei, explained that the Commission will now have to contend with the normal day to day issues that confront any organisation.
[contextly_sidebar id=”nY4hdreyTzan8A2fckTmyBF0jkOiZ9Ui”]In an interview with Citi News’ Felicia Osei on the sidelines of an International Women’s Day event in Accra, Mrs. Osei said “We [the EC] don’t work only every four years [during general elections]. In between time we have District Assembly elections. We are mandated by law to do elections for a lot of statutory bodies. We just did the Council of State elections. We work for a lot for the associations… it is not as if we go on recess for four years.”
In the short-term, she noted that a number of the staff are dealing with evaluation and documentation of the results of the 2016 general election.
“Between the elections, you have staff to manage, you have skills to improve, and when we finish an election we don’t just back up the ballot boxes. So far this year, we have done reviews at all the regions to find out what the challenges were, what we did right, what we didn’t do so well, what we can learn from the previous elections so we can improve on the next elections.”
The Commission launched a five-year strategic plan, as part of efforts to re-brand the electoral body, and Mrs. Osei said the EC will focus on realizing this plan.
“We have a five-year plan we are still implementing. There are certain areas of our institution we need to strengthen. We need to look at the way we structure the business and how we can make sure IT enables even better and more effective elections. We are also looking at cost in terms of running our institutions.”
“There are all sorts of internal issues we have to look at and improve on what we have been doing and also prepare for the next set of elections to make sure they are even better than the last one,” she added.
Mrs. Osei disclosed that the documents pertaining to the review of the elections, which she said are in demand by Electoral Commissions of other countries, will be made available soon on the Commission’s website.
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By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana