An emergency Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting between the Electoral Commission (EC) and the political parties over the ongoing transfer of votes yesterday has ended inconclusively.
The meeting was called by the EC after agents of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) reportedly clashed at some centres.
The exercise, which started on Thursday, May 30, 2024, and scheduled to end Friday, June 14, has been characterised with violence and comes on the heels of the just ended limited registration exercise which recorded clashes too.
In the face of the reported violence, the election management body is shutting the door on political parties observing the exercise to tone down on the tension which is building up ahead of the 2024 polls.
In a memo to its Regional Directors which has been cited by the Ghanaian Times, the EC directed that party agents should not be allowed to observe the exercise.
“The Commission’s attention has been drawn to the violent clashes occurring at some of the District Offices as a result of the transfer of votes exercise.
“Regional Directors are to inform District Officers not to allow agents of political parties to observe the transfer of votes exercise with effect from Monday, June 3, 2024,” the memo, signed by Samuel Tettey, Deputy Commissioner, Operations, said.
Speaking with the media after the meeting in Accra yesterday, the NDC and NPP confirmed that the EC opened the door to political party observation but were at variance on the decision of the Commission to make a u-turn in that regard.
That u-turn, the NDC said, shrouds the entire exercise in secrecy and could be the breeding ground for political gerrymandering insisting their agents would observe the exercise.
“It’s a no no no for us. We (are opposed) to the EC’s unilateral decision to ask political parties to withdraw the agents. In the name of transparency, a key ingredient in the work of the EC, why would anyone want to ask political party agents to withdraw?”
“The NDC, as our General Secretary has stated, will not withdraw our agents from the transfer centres,” the NDC’s Director of IT and Election, Dr Edward Omane Boahen, stated.
According to Dr Boamah, the u-turn by the EC is intended to advance the electoral fortunes of the NPP because “we have on authority specific constituencies and specific number of votes that the NPP wants to transfer to those constituencies. We got that document and in less than 15 minutes the EC’s statement barring political parties was made public”.
This and other actions of the EC in the past, Dr Boamah said, points a grand scheme by the EC to give the governing party electoral advantage but the NDC would leave no stone unturned to ensure a free, fair and credible election in the lead up to and on election day on December 7, 2024.
But a former Chairman of the NPP, Peter McManu, said the NDC would be perpetuating lawlessness if it kept its agents at the centres for the purpose of transfer of votes.
“Under the law there is no room for party agents to observe the process unlike the registration. It was IPAC itself that decided that in the interest of transparency, we should allow party agents to observe the process,” Mr McManu stated.
He said if the EC, having taken note of the violence that has characterised the exercise, decides to make a u-turn, stakeholders must abide and allow the process to flow seamlessly.
“For us as a party, we think that coming events cast their shadows and if the EC in their wisdom, with the authority vested in them under the constitution, decides that we should withdraw the agents, we’ll abide by it in the interest of peace and tranquility in our electoral process (and because of that) we have withdrawn our agents,” he stated.
BY JULIUS YAO PETETSI
