Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Saturday, November 05, 2016
Former Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Martin A.B.K.
Amidu, has descended heavily on the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission
(EC), Charlotte Osei, describing her as ‘incompetent’ and ‘inexperienced.’
He has therefore, called on Ghanaians to “watch her every step
during this election.”
Mr. Amidu, popularly called Citizen Vigilante due to his exploits in
the fight against corruption, also said the EC boss was appointed by the NDC
government to fulfill what he called a ‘rigging agenda,’ and said Mrs. Osei “is
becoming dangerous” for the country.
According to the crusader, the EC boss does not look like a person
who is capable of supervising a peaceful, free and fair general election on
December 7 - which is about a month away -
due to her ‘intransigence’ and ‘arrogance.’
Currently, there are a flurry of civil suits against the EC over the
disqualification of some presidential aspirants; and many have expressed the
fear that it might disrupt the timetable for the election, but the EC has
insisted that there is no cause for alarm.
“The election date of 7th December, 2016 is just about a month away
and the Commissioner has the impudence to tell citizen voters that she is
capable of conducting the election within two weeks, forgetting that her pride,
intransigence and arrogance are already depriving the aspiring candidates of
political parties and others who may eventually qualify to be on the ballot of
their constitutional right to equal opportunity and time to canvass the
electorate for their votes before the election,” Mr. Amidu said in a statement
he issued on Tuesday.
“The Electoral Commissioner does not appear to understand that the
letter and spirit of the 1992 Constitution on the representation of the people
enjoins her to ensure that every political party and its aspiring presidential
candidate or an individual aspirant has equal time and opportunity to canvass
for the votes of the electorate,” he said.
Mr Amidu said the statement made by the EC Chair to the media to the
effect that the commission was going to supervise a successful general
election, notwithstanding the flurry of suits “demonstrates once more the
incompetence, inexperience and utter lack of understanding of the letter and
the spirit of the 1992 Constitution mandating the Commissioner to supervise the
organization of a free, transparent and fair multiparty presidential election.”
He posited, “Printing ballot papers for the presidential election
means nothing to the rights of a political party and its candidate or
individual aspiring candidates and their supporters who might have been
deprived of an equal, fair and transparent right to participate in the
electioneering campaign ‘intended to influence the composition and policies of
the Government’ to be elected.”
According to Mr. Amidu, “Every citizen has a fundamental guaranteed
right to join a political party and to participate freely with that political
party in shaping the political will of the people, to disseminate information
on political ideas and other programmes and to sponsor candidates to the office
of the President of Ghana.”
He said such a guaranteed right “is rendered nugatory and pointless
when candidates have only two weeks to canvass the electorate for support for
the election on 7th December, 2016,” adding, “There can be no free, transparent
and fair elections when any of the disqualified aspiring candidates and any
political party sponsoring them have their names added to the ballot more than
three weeks belatedly, because the Commissioner’s preferred and approved
candidates would have had an unequal advantage over them in the contest for the
presidency.”
Mr. Amidu indicated, “I have already said elsewhere that this
Commissioner was appointed with a rigging agenda. Let us as citizens defend the
Constitution by watching her every step during this election.”
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