Call For Electoral Reforms In Ghana

The frustration of some stakeholders about the seemingly slow pace of reform in the electoral process cannot be relieved in a hurry. The reasons is, realistically speaking, there is not much to change about the content of the laws, regulations and procedures of the process.

Many significant reforms have already been introduced in these areas over the past 22 years of our current democratic dispensation. What need to be done is rather to strontium the enforcement processes of the laws, rules and regulations. 

The fac5t is, since 1993, when we
started using the new constitution, we have endeavoured to carefully craft rules and regulations that will satisfy the general principles of credible electoral process. Also, in matters of public elections our electoral process must, as far as possible, demonstrate our obligation and commitment to universal democratic principles in its formulation in its present state our electoral code appears to have largely lived up to the basic democratic tenets of protection of rights, inclusiveness and transparency.

However, it appears there is
insufficient commitment, across board, to enforcement, compliance and effective monitoring of the procedures in the process. Some of the provisions that are being targeted for change are the Appointment of the chairman of the Electoral Commission by the President: This is the constitutional provision in act:45 with the best democratic intention of securing trust, acceptability and credibility especially as the appointment is done in partnership with the counci8l of state and parliament.

Plus, the commission is a collective of seven independent
individuals that have no pretentions to partisan politics. 

The electoral rules would hardly dispose any of them to influencing
electoral outcomes. What is needed is constant watch of  the
commissioners in what they do or say in the course of of electoral
duty. This constitutional provision can only be faulted on concrete proof or wrong doing by one or all of the appointed members of the commission. 

Even there their removal is allowed through impeachment.
Clearly we have not yet exhausted the full potential of this provision to want to scrap it. It is also crucial for the EC to provide certified voters registers, not the provisional version, to all contending political parties. 

This is not a constitutional obligation but a practise of convenience, to promote  and transparency and inclusiveness in the political process. Yes, this is possible if the EC can adjust its election calender to hasten the process of preparing the final register and distribute it to the political parties before
even calling for the nomination of election candidates. 

The call to make returning officers and polling agents permanent staff of the EC is inappropriate because the day-to day work at the EC to prepare largely for the next election is by law accomplished by the permanent staff hired for that purpose. 

Returning Officers and other temporary workers are engaged specifically to help with the massive deployment that is occasioned during the period of election. It is hard to see what a permanent Returning Officer's duties would be, off elections,
which the district and regional are not already doing. 

Polling agents are representatives of the political parties and candidates with specific partisan interests. The cannot be employed by the EC to
cannot independent, nonpartisan duties.

The is also the call for the release of Election results only after all election petitions are fully decided by the law courts. This is a fair call since the constitution allows the validity if the election.

results to be takes to court but only within 21 days after the
declaration of the results.  From recent experience it seems
unrealistic to gather sufficient evidence from a field of 275 constituencies and over twenty- three thousand polling stations in
three weeks to file a winnable petition. 

Also, the Constitution is not kind enough to extend the tenure of any elected government beyond
four years to the day and to the hour. The legal process can follow
since no elected official, whether sworn into office or not, is safe until all petitions against any of them are cleared.  the remedy for this problem lies in the increased vigilance of the parties and their representatives during the election so that they can routinely spot infringements and call for immediate response actionThe emotive expression "strong room" does not exist in the election vocabulary.

It is probably a nickname conceived by stakeholders to hype the image of the Presidential results collation centre located at the the EC head office in Accra. 

There is nothing strong or weak about this office! In reality the declaration of the parliamentary election results satisfies two levels of computation, that is, the polling station count and the constituency collation of the polling station result.

The president polls go a third level,that is the aggregation of
all the presidential results already announced at the constituency.

The regulations grant accreditation to the party or candidate agents, media reporters and observers to access any of the two collation centers in the constituencies or in Accra to moniter the collation process. 

There's noting magical about the "Strong Room". Scrap the name
and the process of results collation will endure. 

Lets help the electoral process to mature by the first understanding the rules and regulations, applying them dutifully and only call for further reforms if real difficulties emerge.

BY JOHN LARVIE, AN INDEPENDENT ELECTION OBSERVER