The Electoral Commission (EC) has asked Ghanaians to be patient as it is working assiduously to announce the winner of Saturday’s general election.
It said a robust mechanism to receive the results from the Regional Collation Centre and to the National Collation Centre at the Commission’s Headquarters involved a laborious process which must be exhausted before the results was declared.
“By convention, we have been able to declare results within 72 hours after the close of polls,” she said adding, that “it is only 23 hours following the close of polls on Saturday, especially where we have received requests and some questions from the general public as to when to expect the results.”
“I’m happy to announce that the results have come in from the Ahafo Region, and we are expecting that from here on we will start seeing the results coming in, we thought that it was important to update our citizenry on the process for the collation of results as it pertains to our CI-127.
Addressing the news conference in Accra yesterday, the chairperson of the EC, Mrs Jean Mensa, it was quite an elaborate process that involved the political party agents at every step of the way.
Additionally, she said “it also involved observers, the media, and citizens as well where the process emanates from the pink sheets, and it’s important to note that the pink sheets form the basis of the results that are announced, whether it is at the constituency level for parliamentary candidates or whether it is at the national level for presidential candidates.”
Continuing, she said, “from the constituency collation centre, the results travel to the region, where party agents are also present. Again, this is not a counting process.”
The EC Boss said the results from the constituency were also collated at the regional level, once parties were satisfied with the regional results collation forms and the summary forms are filled, and the parties sign on to these, and “they are given copies of these forms where it is at this level that the results are then faxed to the head office that is at the national collation centre.
Those provisional results are brought to the commission, and we scrutinise it. And as the returning officer for the presidential, I go on to sign this. I’d like to ask that citizens exercise patience.”
“At the end of the day, what comes up is acceptable by all the candidates and their supporters and the citizens as well. So this is the elaborate process we have, and we thought that it was important to allay the fears and the anxieties of citizens,” she added.
The commission, she said was going to be intense and would “uphold the will of the people as expressed at the polls, and that will is what has been captured on the pink sheets.”
“However, it’s important that we exercise patience, we take our time, and we are very thorough in producing the results at the national level. As we speak, we have had results come in from Ahafo Region, and we are expecting more results coming in in the next few hours. We believe that within 72 hours, and this has been the norm, we should be able to declare the results of the presidential election.”
BY NORMAN COOPER
