The Electoral Commission has already been dragged to court twelve times under the leadership of its current chairperson, Charlotte Osei.
According to financial analyst, Sydney Casely-Hayford, Charlotte Osei’s predecessor, Dr. Kwadwo Afari Gyan who headed the commission for over two decades was sued only five times.
[contextly_sidebar id=”QeqcIGwymkeISpbFZWrEtP5rn4hQ1ydI”]“…the EC has had to be in court already 12 times since she [Charlotte Osei] took over. Afari Gyan was in court five times for the whole of his period,” Casely-Hayford said on Citi FM’s news analysis programme, The Big Issue on Saturday.
He argued that the numerous court cases the EC has had to defend in court shows that the commission “has lost its focus on who it is representing and what its job is.”
“The EC’s client is basically the people of Ghana. The people of Ghana have decided that they want to come together as families or friends with common identities and ideologies. They have formed themselves into political parties so every political party that is negotiating with the EC is negotiating on behalf of his family of committed ideologues.”
“The EC therefore has a major obligation to ensure that the people of this country have their views and their needs taken care of as mandated by the constitution. When you look at it that way then you will realize that the major stakeholders are the political parties…you cannot therefore be consistently in fight with the people in which you are supposed to be representing, which is what is happening. At every turn of the calendar the EC is in a fight with political parties and it doesn’t make any sense,” he added.
Some court cases against EC
The EC was last week defeated in court by the Progressive People’s Party after it disqualified its flagbearer, Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom from this year’s election due to errors on Dr. Nduom nomination forms.
It is currently battling it out with some aggrieved political parties including the National Democratic Party, the People’s National Convention, and the Great Consolidated Popular Party and which it disqualified their flagbearers from the polls.
The Supreme Court on July 5, 2016 ordered the EC to rid the voters register of 56,000 names who used the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) as proof of their Ghanaian identity to enable them register.
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By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin