We won’t replace accuracy with speed — EC boss
The Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC), Mrs Charlotte Osei, has urged the public to be patient and bear with the commission as it works to release accurate results of the December 7 general election that reflect the will of Ghanaians.
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She said there was anxiety among Ghanaians for the EC to call the results but indicated that the duty that the EC owed to Ghanaians was not to give quick results but rather accurate results.
Mrs Osei, who was surrounded by four other EC members, was giving updates on the December 7 presidential and parliamentary elections to journalists at the EC headquarters in Accra yesterday.
The press briefing was instructive, given the fact that both the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) had claimed that their candidates were leading in the presidential election.
Condemnation
Mrs Osei condemned the NPP and the NDC for indicating earlier that they had either won the election or were in the lead.
She said the EC would not declare results based on pressure from political parties but rather it would do what was “legal that will lead to acceptability of the results”.
She said it was barely 24 hours since the close of the December 7 polls and indicated that in 2008 and 2012, the results were declared about three days after the conduct of the polls.
“We want to exercise prudence to ensure that the results are accurate and properly signed. Accuracy is more important than speed,” she said.
Results
Mrs Osei said the EC’s electronic system for the collation of results had been compromised, hence the delay in getting and releasing the results.
As a result, she said, the commission was only relying on the manual system of collation of results.
The EC Chairperson said it had so far received 90 certified results for presidential and parliamentary elections from the Greater Accra, Central, Western, Eastern, Brong Ahafo, Ashanti, Upper East and Upper West regions and indicated that it was yet to receive any results from the Volta and the Northern regions.
She said party agents at the EC’s national collation centre had refused to sign the results, insisting that they would do so only after receiving the pink sheets from the respective constituencies.
Mrs Osei said the refusal of the agents to sign would not invalidate the results but the commission intended to wait till the arrival of the pink sheets for the sake of openness, fairness and transparency.
“We have given the agents a bit of time. We want the process to be transparent, fair and legal,” she said.
Challenges
The EC Chairperson said in one constituency in the Afram Plains, voting was extended to 10 p.m. last Wednesday.
She said in Tema East, there had been an error in the collation and indicated that it had been resolved, while at Adeiso in the Eastern Region, there had been some challenges with the declaration of results at one of the collation centres.
She said EC officials had moved to the constituency collation centre to resolve that issue.
Mrs Osei said polls had closed in the Jaman North Constituency which were held yesterday. The election in the constituency could not take place last Wednesday because of some challenges.
No manipulation
The EC Chairperson said the commission could not change or manipulate the results declared at the polling stations and at the collation centres.
She said the EC headquarters only put the results together.
