The Electoral Commission has sought to clear the air on its relationship with Israeli firm, Superlock Technologies Limited (STL), saying the company was only contracted to manage its biometric verification machines.
STL was contracted in the run up to the 2012 elections by the Commission to purchase, install and maintain the biometric verification machines but the exact nature of their relationship came under close scrutiny by some political parties after the Minister of Interior, Prosper Bani, issued a statement in which he claimed the company transmitted tallied results to the EC.
[contextly_sidebar id=”EnVD8NeUj3w6ka6FeoYUcnNgm93yYEme”]The opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), has also called on the Electoral Commission to clarify its relationship with STL in the name of transparency ahead of the November polls.
A private legal practitioner, Nana Obiri Boahen, had also hinted at a possible legal action against the Commission over the matter.
But speaking with journalists at the end of a capacity building training programme, the Deputy Chairman of the Electoral Commission in charge of Finance and Administration, Georgina Opoku Amankwaa, noted that STL were never involved in the transmission of election results.
“Transmission of results was never the work of STL and Dr. Afari Gyan, former Chairman of the Commission had always been emphatic on this fact,” She stated.
Mrs. Amankwaa explained further that EC has never contradicted the former EC chair’s stance on the matter.
“…And the commission has never come out to say that what Afari Gyan put out there is not true; that is not why the commission did not speak about whatever is coming out because we have given our position and it has been made clear all this time that STL never transmitted results for the commission.”
According to Mrs. Amankwa, STL only helps with the management and maintenance of biometric voter machines.
“All that STL does for the EC is that they helped us buy the biometric voter registration and then the BVD’s [biometric verification devices]… as I speak, they are the people working on these things, the BVR’s that they helped us procure, they are those who service it and they programme it for us to do the registration.”
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By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana