By William
Yaw Owusu
Monday, October
30, 2017
The controversial contract awarded to a private firm
by the Electoral Commission (EC) for the printing of the Statement of Polls and
Declaration of Results Forms - popularly called Pink Sheets - during the
crucial general elections almost a year ago, is resurfacing.
This is because a petitioner, who is seeking the
removal of the EC chairperson, Charlotte Osei, has claimed that the EC boss put
herself in a conflict of interest situation when she awarded the contract to
Aerovote Security Printing (Ghana) Limited to print the pink sheets.
Pre-Arranged
Deal
According to Douglas Seidu, who is a lawyer by
profession, Ms Charlotte Osei, has strong business links with the Director of
Aerovote and is interpreting that to mean a situation of conflict of interest
and had ‘arranged’ the deal even before the procurement process opened.
“The respondent patently ignored a conflict of
interest situation when she advocated, ensured and superintended over a
contract that was awarded to Aerovote Security Printing (Ghana) Limited, whose
Director used to be a client of Prime Attorneys, a company owned by the
Respondent (EC Boss),” the lawyer said in his petition to President Akufo-Addo,
which has since been forwarded to the Chief Justice for action.
Prior
Correspondence
“I have seen prior contractual correspondence
between the respondent, Ms Tutua (Manager of Prime Attorneys) and the Director
of Aerovote Security Printing (Ghana) Limited that suggests that the respondent
arranged the contract at the blind side of the EC at a time when the
procurement process had not begun,” part of the petition - a copy of which is
in possession of DAILY GUIDE - reads.
Mr. Seidu is seeking the removal of Mrs. Charlotte
Osei on grounds of breach of public procurement practices and provisions of the
Public Procurement Act, 2003 (Act 633) as amended, gross financial
mismanagement, as well as conflict of interest.
Public
Outcry
It would be recalled that in the heat of the
election processes, there was public outcry over the award of the pink sheets
contract to Aerovote, which some critics claimed it was inflated when the
GH¢7.2 million price was revealed by the commission.
At that time, the contention was that some local
companies were said to be willing to execute the same contract for less but the
EC allegedly ignored them and gave it to Aerovote, although Mrs. Charlotte Osei
had variously insisted that her outfit wanted a value-for-money
transaction.
The actual tender at the opening was GH¢8.95 million,
which the EC announced Aerovote – a company that was bankrupt as at 2013 but
relocated to Ghana sometime in November 2015 – as the winner; but by the time
it reached the public, the amount had changed to GH¢7.2 million.
Opposition
Protest
When the then opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP)
raised issues about the propriety of Aerovote’s contractual obligations, the
Communications Director at the EC, Eric Kofi Dzakpasu, issued a statement
condemning the NPP for raising what he deemed ‘false’ alarm.
“It is false that Aerovote was awarded a contract
worth US$8.95 million for the printing of the Statement of Polls and
Declaration of Results Forms. The contract awarded to Aerovote by the Commission is way
below US$2 million in value (GH¢7.2 million),” he said among other things in
the statement.
Deafening
Silence
The EC, at the time, did not appear to explain to
the public how it ended up with GH¢7.2 million as the contract sum, after Aerovote
had quoted GH¢8.9 million at the opening of the actual tender.
According to the procurement rules, any transaction
worth more than GH¢1 million should automatically go through the Central Tender
Board for concurrent approval, but in this pink sheet contract, which the EC
says cost the taxpayer GH¢7.2 million, it does not appear that that rule was
followed.
Controversial
Letter
The EC boss, in a controversial letter to the Public
Procurement Authority (PPA) in September 2016 asking the authority to re-open
the process and admit Aerovote to be part of the process, had laid emphasis on
the issue of value-for-money as her basis for getting the company in.
Curiously, the EC as far back as October 2015 had
written to PPA about the procurement of electoral materials, including the pink
sheets, and had presented a list excluding Aerovote, as the companies that were
going to be part of the processes.
However, eyebrows were raised in September 2016 -
one clear year after the submission of the list of companies - when Mrs
Charlotte Osei wrote again to the PPA asking the authority to include Aerovote
in the process.
Aerovote
Existence
A source told DAILY GUIDE last year that he
believed that as at October 2015 when the EC boss was writing to the PPA to
submit the list of companies to be engaged in the tendering process, Aerovote
was not even registered in Ghana.
Procurement
Breach
The source further said that Aerovote’s selection
appears to be in conflict with the procurement laws because the tender laws say
that every participating company must have two years’ account (balance) sheet
but that cannot be said to have been done.
Spirited
Defence
The EC boss clarified the issues on BBC in the heat of the election campaign
in 2016 when she put up a spirited defence for Aerovote, saying, “The company
has always printed them (pink sheets) for us and has now relocated to Ghana
which made their pricing better for us.
“This time, we did not have to bear the high freight
charges that we would have had to bear and also the time for shipping.”
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