We should be relieved if former Chairman of the Electoral Commission Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan has been recently part of the conversation about EC’s processes and elections management into December 2024.
As an important player, deep into the controversial 2012 Election Petition, he must have a relevant contribution to make. Also as a matter of institutional memory and experience, he equally has a contribution that should inform decisions that feed into our elections management space into the future.
In a recent statement, the former EC Chair said, “Persons who commit serious election offences, particularly if they are professional election officials or electronic experts, must be severely punished for attempting to undermine the will of the people…”
“And I am singling out professional election administrators and electronic experts because they know what they are doing,” he stressed.
I don’t, however, believe that is the conversation now because crime is crime.
Infractions are always criminal
“A voter may commit some infraction. An election official, by their training, they know what is the right thing to do. The electronic expert who is tampering with the figures, knows exactly what he is doing and these people, I am suggesting, they should be seriously punished,” Dr Afari Gyan added.
That is fair and square. And the law is plain on that, except that we haven’t seen too many of such infractions reported and concomitant punishment effected – at least from the early days of Afari-Gyan into his own last days and from Charlotte’s till now. Again, according to Dr Afari Gyan, punishing offenders severely will help serve as a deterrence to others who plan to engage in election malpractices. This, too, has been the law.
Dr Kwadwo Afari Gyan, who was speaking at the Ghana Bar Association’s (GBA) annual conference in Kumasi, stressed that in a democratic election, the voter is pre-eminent, and a valid vote is invaluable for purposes of determining the choices of the people.
For this reason, the seasoned election administrator said any act intended to manipulate or undermine the will of the people, particularly by those employed to oversee the exercise, should be considered as an act of “treason”. This, too, is the law. Indeed, again, any infraction of an electoral law is criminal, and must be investigated as a criminality.
NDC gripe, EC’s finished processes
The raging conversation, if I am not myself misled or confused, is that the opposition National Democratic Congress is mooting another conversation ostensibly from Mars, without detailing their gripes and what they think are the options for what they consider credibility. And, they are picketing soon about what only they know.
So, when Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan drops another conversation as if the raging one is exhausted, I cannot comprehend the issues he makes about technology and experts taking advantage of technology to steal the verdict.
He says, “I am singling out here professional election administrators and electronic experts because they know exactly what they are doing. A voter may commit some infraction.” And, he advises political parties and various contenders in general elections to obtain the requisite data before going to court to challenge the election results.
But that is exactly where the controversy is, except the reporter misquoted his line of argument and thought.
Elections management is arithmetic. Period!
According to the reporter, Dr Kwadwo Afari Gyan urged all who intended to challenge the results of any national elections to ensure they possessed well executed and authentic “pink sheets.” Fact. Indeed, what he said was the fact, except that he was cagey pointing that out to the NDC because technology, in my opinion, and I believe in the opinion of even the experts, doesn’t feature to a point of intrigue and mischief as far as a court is concerned.
As the report outlines, pink sheets are the EC’s official documents used to collate results of elections at polling stations, constituency and regional levels, and are the source documents which the Commission relies on to declare Members of Parliament (MPs) and the President as elected.
“Pink sheets are the most important source documents for reconstructing election results. Please, take it from me that the pink sheets are the most important source documents for the reconstruction of election results,” the former EC Chair said.
“That is what we mean when we say elections are won or lost at the polling station. That is what it means. Those pink sheets, duly executed, authentic and duly executed. So, my friendly advice to you is that if you don’t [have] authentic, duly executed pink sheets, as we say in Ghana, think twice before you go to court,” he added.
NDC demonstration against EC
As I do this piece, the NDC is putting in organizing youth across the country to go on a demonstration. That demonstration is not about election petition or official complaint that Parliament or the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) cannot deal with. But the NDC has deliberately ignored the imperative of processes, including IPAC and Parliament and, for that matter, the courts which have final jurisdictions.
What the NDC appears to be doing is to implicate the EC and the whole fabric of elections management of which they had been a veritable part. In that, I believe, they are implicating the Legislature which consists of their own Minority as well as IPAC of which they are also part.
It is cry-baby tantrum that the NDC must explain to the civil society stakeholders. They cite vote transfers to other constituencies, though every party has privileges under the law in transferring votes. But they make wild claims about the EC skewing the processes for the benefit of a political party, which is the incumbent NPP.
Intriguingly, the NDC hasn’t established and submitted names that they can prove in December 2024 will be voting NPP or came to make the transfers in NPP colours so would be voting NPP at some other constituency.
So, when they ask for audit by an independent body, I ask what basis the independent audit firm or parameters they would be applying to filter the information and draw conclusions.
Polling station mechanism
As Afari-Gyan has stated, and rightly so, the ultimate decision involving declaration will be made on pink sheet ruling by the vetted work collectively of EC staff, polling agents, collation official doing simple arithmetic and not technology such as Excel because that is for the political parties to do at their levels in monitoring and what input the media, election observers and other stakeholders would be detailing on the space.
At the last layer that Dr Afari-Gyan appears to be referring to, party chiefs, with the data they have assembled, share notes with the EC, and make declarations. If votes don’t tally, it is arithmetic that is employed – not technology.
This is because technology may befuddle the facts as garbage inputted will output garbage. I believe that was why Rojo Mettle-Nunoo and Johnson Asiedu Nketia were given calculators, and not an Excel system spread over the figures, to determine a ruling affirming the declaration by the EC that the NPP, indeed, had won the 2020 presidential elections by some 500,000 votes.
What next, NDC?
As things stand now, we cannot tell what next the NDC would do as a frontal jibe at the EC, though the avenues for redress and engagement aren’t closed, by any stretch of the imagination.
Barely three months into the general elections, the mischief that the NDC believe it can do to stir acceptability is agitate, stampede and throw tantrums. That was the tactic for 2008 and 16 years later, for today 2024. Only God knows where this cycle would take them. Particularly when they know they know deep inside that they haven’t, under JM, a history and catalogue of achievements that match those of the NPP, we may understand them, if they do what they are best at…
In all of that, they should be reminded of Dr Afar-Gyan’s eternal pink sheet rule he now refers to here – the famous requirement that stunted the deep-seated NDC stealing machine within the corridors of the EC. Thank God for the subsequent 2012 Election Petition reforms that continue to expose the NDC as experts in evading pink sheet arguments.
PS
These notwithstanding, we may have the demonstrations. Only let’s be cool about them, even if the next 90 or so days will be picketing. As for the elections, Insha Allahu, it will come and go as if nothing has happened – with one winner and one loser.
By Abena Baawuah
goldcoastnewsline@gmail.com
