NDI & IRI officials in a group photograph with Ex-President Kufuor
Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Thursday, August 11, 2016
Former President John Agyekum Kufuor has cautioned the Electoral
Commission (EC) to be transparent and accountable in order for Ghana to have
peaceful general elections on December 7.
The EC, under Charlotte Osei, is seen by many political pundits as
having assumed a posture of arrogance to the displeasure of well-meaning Ghanaians,
as this year’s elections reach home stretch.
“The referee must be seen to be transparent and accountable. We talk
of transparency and accountability and these are the cornerstones of our
national constitution and the EC should not be exempted from these provisions,”
he told a delegation from the reputable National Democratic Institute (NDI) and
the International Republican Institute (IRI), both based in the United States.
The delegation, led by Johnnie Carson, former Assistant Secretary of
State for African Affairs, who is currently a Senior Advisor at Albright
Stonebridge Group and the United States Institute of Peace, had paid a courtesy
call on the former president to solicit his views on the processes leading to
the crucial elections.
The team is expected to conduct a pre-election assessment and
specifically look at the environment on the ground prior to the general
elections.
In the process, the team will meet the political parties, senior and
former political leaders, constituent groups, NGOs and others who are concerned
about the democratic process.
President Kufuor said, “The whole idea is that the EC must be
independent alright, but it should also know that it is accountable to the
people. It is not an independent institution unto itself. It is accountable to
the people generally.”
Afari-Gyan’s
Influence
The meeting became interesting when the delegation’s leader, in
outlining Ghana’s democratic credentials, remarked that immediate past EC boss,
Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, played a significant role in ensuring that Ghana
continued to remain peaceful and stable.
Mr. Kufuor then countered, “I acknowledge that the same EC under
Afari-Gyan brought me and my party to power, but we all have our ups and downs.
Today you are a fair referee, tomorrow for whatever reasons you may not prove
to be that fair. As we respect Afari-Gyan for his track record, we should also
admit that the situation we find ourselves now is more reflective of how he
left the scene.”
Mr Kufuor even cited a situation in which he said a few months to
the 2012 elections, the EC was busily creating new constituencies at a time
when the commission had closed the voters’ register and rebuffed those not in
favour of the creation.
“At the bottom of the exercise, we should acknowledge the relevance
of history. We talked of Dr. Afari-Gyan going off and a new EC chairperson
being appointed. I don’t think it is as straight as that. You remember what transpired in the 2012
general elections. We saw the palpable tension around the country. At that time
it was Afari-Gyan!”
New EC Boss
He continued, “The new chairperson of the commission wasn’t at all
involved in 2012 and you remember the Supreme Court case that followed after
the elections.”
He said the opposition tested the legitimacy and fairness of the
2012 results in court and although the leader disagreed with the court, he
accepted the verdict for peace to prevail.
“There is an adage that ‘once bitten twice shy’. We are coming into
another election and naturally some serious stakeholders think that there
should be true transparency, fairness and the justice of the election.
“Today party A got it and how it got it might be in question so party
B coming into the contest again wants to ensure that truly the EC, not so much
the Chairperson, would be a fair arbiter so that in the end the loser would
accept the verdict and the winner would also have the magnanimity for the other
side.”
According to former President Kufuor, “It is the evolution of the
system and 2012 proved to be such an exceptional election that people fear
generally that if some of the things that happened are repeated in 2016, we
would not know the outcome and we don’t want to be surprised at all.
“Our wish across the board is that we should go through this
election peacefully so that at the end there must be a winner and we continue
to remain as one nation,” he articulated, adding, “But the tension that we
sense, I believe, is tension that has been generated just to keep on reminding
stakeholders, more so the referee (EC) that the institution has responsibility
to the country and I am sure it wouldn’t go down in history as the body whose
supervision of election caused Ghana.”
Accountability
“If the executive, legislature, judiciary and all other
institutional bodies are expected to be accountable, transparent, then the EC
should not be different from these organs of state,” Mr Kufuor said, adding, “All
the programmes and the management of the elections should be such as to
convince us that the commission is living up to its responsibilities. The
average Ghanaian essentially is worried.”
Vigilante
Groups
The ex-president also touched on concerns raised by the delegation
that there appeared to be the emergence of party militias or vigilante groups
in the country; but he said he trusted the security agencies to handle the
situation.
“Wherever there is power you see people trying to show muscle but I
have a feeling that the security agencies would do their work impartially. If
they do their work impartially and the EC also plays its role in fairness and
in neutrality, those sprouting vigilantes would not amount to anything.”
The delegation leader said, “There are new circumstances that
prevail today which will raise the level of tensions, create more opportunity
for post and perhaps pre-election conflict. We are here to get an assessment of
what the challenges are for holding a successful election like you have done so
well in the past, and what has made the situation potentially more volatile
than before.”
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