When all hopes had grown into disappointments, there would be no great willingness about the final going ( Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born).
The fears of many Ghanaians about the call for a new voters register for the 2016 general elections not being heeded to by the Electoral Commission has come to pass. Many people are disappointed but not surprised. The Chair of the Electoral Commission, Mrs. Charlotte Osei, and the circumstances under which she was appointed generated some apprehensions among a section of the Ghanaian populace. Normal, isn’t it in a multi-interest society? It was up to Mrs. Osei to offer assurance of fairness to all to carry majority of us along into her confidence and trust.
She failed miserably by her conduct and utterances, her posture and open despise towards the New Patriotic Party (NPP) which is openly observed than told, to wipe off the impressions and notions followers and sympathizers of the NPP and a section of the Ghanaian populace have about her. She added to the suspicions of her being there to do the bidding of the NDC and President John Dramani Mahama. I watched and listened to her on News File last Saturday and her inward hatred towards the NPP could not be hidden. Why? When the issue of unqualified people’s names on the register came up, the only example she could offer was that of over 200,000 unqualified names on the voter register from the Ashanti Region.
She was unable to offer examples from any other region knowing too well that the Ashanti Region is the strongest region in Ghana. She was silent on Volta Region, the Upper West and Upper East regions or any other region. She continued to allude parochially, to an unsustainable argument that, any attempt to prepare a new voter register would lead to an elitist kind of a voter register. Her reference was to the use of the NHIS card to get names of some voters on the register out, a process the Supreme Court has declared illegal. I hold a passport issued to me by the Republic of Ghana as well as a Drivers’ License, but I used an NHIS card to do the last registration. If an opportunity is offered again, I certainly will use either the passport or the Drivers’ License. I believe there are so many who might have done same. Where lies the elitism other than repeating the charge the NDC has always heaped on the NPP?
In any case since when did becoming an elite become a crime in this country, and that if Mrs. Osei had been a plebeian, would she had been appointed to that position? This POPULIST NONSENSE must give way to pragmatic and realistic approach to addressing national issues and make efforts through policies to increase the number of elites out of our populace. The leadership of this country today is not plebeian, they are educated and hold and control power. That is the classification or if you like, the definition of an elite, in any case, is it not the right of every citizen to own and possess a passport? It is the responsibility of a government to make it easier for citizens to own and possess a passport. If the acquisition of passports even by the so-called elite is a herculean task, then the so called-plebeian is not disadvantaged because he or she is a plebeian, but it is the fact that the system is so weak, corrupt and intimidating to some extent for the plebeian to acquire what is a right.
In any case, Article 42 of the 1992 Constitution states ‘Every citizen of Ghana of eighteen years of age or above and of sound mind has the right to vote and is entitled to be registered as a voter for the purpose of public elections and referenda’. The constitution does not talk about elites or plebeians. All the EC does is to set the ground rules for all, taking some of the positions espoused in Article 45 into consideration, one of which in previous registration, the Supreme Court has rejected. How does correcting what the highest Court of the land has stated to be illegal and wrongful, create an elitist register? This is warped thinking in my view of the EC chair, which is a product of a pre-determined position even before the facts are known.
Now to the NPP, the true position of the EC Chair has been exposed, that she is not going to be fair, her allegiance towards the NDC and John Dramani Mahama is unshakeable and her aversion towards the NPP, non- negotiable, what powers do we have as a party in this situation going forward towards 2016? There has always been the thinking that the people in the rural areas do not like the NPP. That for me, cannot be true, the truth however is that we allow the NDC to take advantage of the vulnerability of our ‘Agents’ before, during and after voting in every elections. It is also a fact that the remnants of the PDCs/CDRs still are effective in some rural communities; it is also a fact that many of them are also dead or have defected to the NPP.
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The problem which has afflicted our election fortunes is the caliber of our Polling Agents. Their understanding of the issues, before, during and after the elections has been of immense disadvantage to our candidates, particularly the Presidential Candidates. In all our elections, one could see the agents positioned very far away from the action spots when in the case of the 2012 elections, the C I 75 allowed the agents the freedom to go close to the table where the ballot papers are issued, except that they do not have to interfere with the process, but also can report any malpractices to the Presiding Members, some of whom are themselves compromised before the elections. The agents are also empowered to file complaints about what they perceived as breach of the process.
Let us be very honest, how many of our agents are in a position to file a written complaints to the Presiding Officer or even the party? I am not insulting anybody or being arrogant, I am drawing attention to a basic weakness in our vigilance process during an election. Fortunately for us, thousands of Ghanaians of all professional, educational and technical backgrounds have agreed to offer their services to the party in 2016. How are we identifying these people to take them through training regarding the dos and don’ts of an election?
Are we sitting down till the time comes and because we would have not identified alternative agents, we fall on the old hands who are malleable to monetary influences, intimidations and threats to man the Polling Stations? This is the time for Constituency Executives to get the Electoral Area Co-ordinators to push their Polling Station Executives to identify potential Polling Agent volunteers from their various Polling Stations and submit their names and other details to the Co-ordinators who will forward them to the Constituency Executives for scrutiny and assessment so we can pick a minimum of four out of the lot for future training towards the elections.
The truth once again is that not so much work is done at the Constituency levels by officers appointed to run and manage the party, unless in many instances, it is a funeral where the Parliamentary Candidate or the Parliamentarian is invited to attend and there the Executives follow him to make donations to the bereaved family. Again, no malice intended, but unless the truth about our weaknesses in the party is pointed out, we may not be able to address them going forward towards 2016.
Our biggest task as a party, facing the unfavourable position of the EC Chair, is not to continue to fight a system we cannot win, but to position ourselves in a manner that will shame our foes, our strength lies in the goodwill available to our Presidential Candidate in particular and the party generally, but perpetual vigilance by people who understand the issue and will ensure the right thing being done, is the answer. Three tots in these hard times.
