Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
There appear to be
confusion at the Electoral Commission (EC) over who should take over from the
outgoing Chairman, Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan who is retiring very soon.
Dr. Afari-Gyan is due
to address parliament today, probably for the last time, as he proceeds on
terminal his leave prior to retirement next week.
Even before he retires,
there is serious power-play among the deputy commissioners and the issue of who
should take over as the acting Commissioner before a substantive one is
appointed, has become intense.
The EC boss is going
to parliament to explain the botched District Level Elections which should have
been held on March 3, to the house.
A source told DAILY
GUIDE that Amadu Sulley, a deputy commissioners in charge of Operations
is seriously lobbying to be appointed acting Commissioner and possibly
substantive when Afari-Gyan finally retires in June.
Sources told DAILY
GUIDE that Mr Amadu has a lot of question to answer as he was said to have
created the mess in the botched district level election.
As the person in
charge of operations, he reportedly ignored calls by Dr. Afari-Gyan to extend
the District Level Elections timetable when it became apparent that the
Constitutional Instrument (C.I.) that was to be used to regulate the election
was flawed.
“If there is anybody
to be blamed, it should be Amadu Sulley because Afari-Gyan asked him to extend
the time for the election but he did not heed to the advice. He caused the
election mess,” the source claimed.
“He is busily positioning
himself as the Acting Commissioner and the sort of ongoing power-play at the
commission is amazing. Dr. Afari-Gyan’s imminent departure has gripped everybody
at the commission.”
The source said the
cancellation of the election by the Supreme Court has thrown the EC’s budgeted
programmes out of gear.
“The EC spent millions
of state money to print the ballot papers and made other preparations before
the court ordered them to restart the whole process so it is a huge financial
loss Dr. Afari-Gyan and his staff caused.”
“It is clear that the
commission will have to do another balloting for candidates except in areas
where only one candidate will be contesting and all these will be at the
expense of the taxpayer.”
The election was
called off because Benjamin Eyi Mensah, a fisherman from winneba in the Central
region, challenged the maturity of C.I. 85, the instrument used by the
commission to attempt to organize the election and the Supreme Court duly
affirmed the plaintiff’s reliefs.
EC statement
The Commission later
in a terse statement said "in view of the Supreme Court's decision in the
matter of Benjamin Eyi Mensah v The Electoral Commission, on Friday, 27th
February 2015, with regard to the maturity of C.I 85, the District Level
Elections and all activities connected with them have been suspended forthwith
until further notice."
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