Advertisement

Had it been NDC or NPP

Had it been NDC or NPP

Even a child is known by his doings, whether his work be pure and whether it be right. Prov 20:11.

The Electoral Commission(EC) has given the verdict; only four of the presidential candidates who filed to contest the 2016 general election are qualified to stand for the election. According to the Chairperson of the EC, the candidates could not be validated to contest the election because they failed to meet certain requirements under the main instrument guiding the conduct of the election. 

Presently, we may not be able to predict what some of the disqualified candidates will do under the law to challenge the decision of the EC or accept their fate and plan for the future. But there is one danger that we must all come together and fight. According to the EC, if one registered voter endorses the forms of more than one candidate, both candidates will be disqualified.  Again, if a voter , who endorses a candidate, allegedly registered more than once, then the form is not valid. These are potentially dangerous, especially where the voters register has not been made available to the political parties and where there are no scientific means for the parties to identify such problems.

 It is the primary duty of the EC to eliminate names of those who register more than once. Moreover, it is not easy for the parties to detect whether one of those who have endorsed their forms have also done so for any other candidate, beyond the assurance from the voter. It, thus, becomes imperative that we all come together to prescribe penalties for such behaviour.  We must not leave the parties to fight this on their own because it could be a potential for violence.

Another issue is  by what means the EC is able to establish that some fraud has been committed. For instance, if a voter genuinely endorses the form of one candidate and another party fraudulently uses the identity of that voter by forging the signature, how will the EC identify the valid signature as against the fraudulent one beyond merely punishing the two candidates. Will it not serve a more meaningful purpose if there was an avenue for the EC to interact with the voter to establish whether the voter indeed endorsed more than one candidate? 

It may also be of interest to find out whether the instrument guiding the conduct of the 2016 election is the only one that must be enforced by the EC. Under our electoral laws, the EC is to ensure that any political party which is registered with them must have a physical presence in at least two thirds of the districts in the country. The EC is equally to supervise the finances of the parties, which are expected to submit audited accounts after elections. The last time the issue came up, it was clear that not even the two leading parties, the New Patriotic Party and the National Democratic Congress, had met the requirements.

The matter was a subject for comment by Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom who felt that if the EC was to promote free and fair elections, then it must enforce all the demands of the electoral laws of this country and not to be selective in which of the rules must be enforced. 

As it has turned out, Dr Nduom has been proven right. The EC has been quick to disqualify some candidates for not meeting all the provisions of the Constitutional Instrument guiding the 2016 general election.

While some supporters of some of the candidates who have been disqualified are trooping to the EC offices to find out the reasons for the disqualification of their candidates, we must imagine the magnitude of the problem if either the NPP or the NDC had been affected by the decision of the EC. Would the EC have been able to disqualify any of the two, or that it is not possible for the two to fall into the danger associated with the other parties?

Could it also be that the disqualification of the presidential aspirants is the beginning of the assertiveness of the EC and that henceforth, it will religiously enforce the electoral laws of the country to bring discipline among the political parties?

However the present matter is resolved, it has become more than imperative that the EC provides voters registers to political parties long before nominations are opened. The EC must also initiate legislation to punish voters who endorse the forms of more than one candidate. More important, the EC must deal with multiple registration as the custodian of the register, not penalise those who depend on the register for their endorsement.

The presidential campaigns have been shorn of the animated discourse of Dr Nduom and the feminine dimension from Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings. 

 

Connect With Us : 0242202447 | 0551484843 | 0266361755 | 059 199 7513 |