Some political parties have expressed surprise at the\u00a0Electoral Commission’s (EC) U-turn on the controversial Elections Steering Committee for the November polls.<\/p>\n
The EC on Saturday issued a statement announcing that the 18-member Steering Committee had not been suspended despite reports on Friday that\u00a0the work of the committee had been suspended following\u00a0an Inter Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting that took place over the matter.<\/p>\n
[contextly_sidebar id=”fOEiBOvGI4GdyzbUYOf1QDkJO5I8nhBi”]After the\u00a0IPAC meeting with the EC on Friday, the reps of the various political parties who spoke to the media, gave the impression that the commission had suspended the committee over allegations of bias and had promised to look into the issues raised.<\/p>\n
At the meeting, the parties also questioned the importance of the committee, adding that the EC failed to provide satisfactory answers about why it insisted on setting up the steering committee.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Citi News <\/strong>on the latest development, the\u00a0Deputy General Secretary of the NPP, Nana Obiri Boahene, said some of the EC staff have clearly outlived their\u00a0usefulness.<\/p>\n \u201cAs the Electoral Commission of Ghana, if you consider the utterances and comments of\u00a0some of the members, you will know that they have outlived their usefulness.\u201d<\/p>\n A frustrated Boahene said the Commission can decide to handover its entire mandate to the steering committee.<\/p>\n \u201cThey can decide to, as it were, hand over all functions of the EC as spelt out in the constitution to the Steering Committee. Who cares?\u201d<\/p>\n He said inasmuch as the NPP had issues with the former EC boss, Dr. Afari Gyan, it is so clear that he performed much better in that capacity than the current EC Chair, Charlotte Osei.<\/p>\n \u201cAs for the present EC boss,\u00a0she is a pale shadow of Dr. Afari Gyan;\u00a0comparatively, Dr Afari Gyan was better.\u201d<\/p>\n The General Secretary of the People’s National Convention (PNC), Atik Mohammed, in commenting on the EC’s U-turn said the Commission is needlessly complicating the issues at stake.<\/p>\n \u201cHaving conceded that they\u2019ve erred, it will be difficult for the Commission to say the committee should continue with its\u00a0work whilst. I would like to understand what they [EC] meant by saying return to the drawing board.\u201d<\/p>\n We are surprised at EC\u2019s U-turn \u2013 PPP<\/strong><\/p>\n The Progressive People\u2019s Party (PPP) has also expressed shocked over the Electoral Commission\u2019s backward move on the suspending the Election Steering Committee following last Friday\u2019s IPAC meeting.<\/p>\n Party General Secretary, Mutala Muhammad told Citi News<\/strong> the move is untoward.<\/p>\n He explained that during their IPAC meeting held last Friday, the EC promised to \u201cgo back to the drawing and they will get back to us.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn principle the parties agreed that its better we scrap this steering committee. So basically we expressed our opinion to them that it is better we discard it so that there wouldn\u2019t be any suspicion in November 2016. They also promised to get back to the drawing board and get back to us. So this hullabaloo about this U-turn, I\u2019m confused because we told them that we didn\u2019t like the idea and they said they will get back to us.\u201d<\/p>\n Mutala Muhammad also lamented that during IPAC meetings, the EC does not supply them with the agenda to be discussed adding that \u201cit\u2019s only usually during other matters that we ourselves raise issues and we discuss it.\u201d<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n By Delali Adogla-Bessa\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Some political parties have expressed surprise at the\u00a0Electoral Commission’s (EC) U-turn on the controversial Elections Steering Committee for the November polls. The EC on Saturday issued a statement announcing that the 18-member Steering Committee had not been suspended despite reports on Friday that\u00a0the work of the committee had been suspended following\u00a0an Inter Party Advisory Committee […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,10,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-slider-1","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=192118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=192118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=192118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=192118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}