The Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) has cautioned the Electoral Commission (EC) to ensure that accountants and members drawn from the Ghana Bar Association (GBA) to aid in filling forms and adding figures at collation centres during the December polls are non-partisan.
As part of moves to ensure that the upcoming polls are credible and transparent, the EC is spearheading the implementation of 27 reforms, recommended by the Electoral Reform Committee, among them is the decision to engage members of the GBA and Chattered Accounts in the conduct of certain aspects of the elections.
Speaking to Class News, National Coordinator of CODEO, Albert Kofi Arhin said the EC must be circumspect in implementing that reform and take the pains to do a proper selection of the professionals it intends using, so as to ensure that all stakeholders have faith in the outcome of the elections, adding that the professionals must be mixed with experienced electoral officers so that a clean job is done.
“I know this is in line with the reforms that the commission has started undertaking. First of all let me say it’s a good idea to improve the efficiency of the commission and also to instill some level of transparency and fairness. … Getting the accountants and lawyers at the election centres is fine but let me caution here that these should be mixed with people who have often done the job and have the experience,” he stated.
“I know they are going to be trained at the collation centres to be adding up, but the most important thing is that people who generate the figures at the polling station, the presiding officers and polling assistants should be of a certain standard and I am happy here that the commission is also in the reform package saying that they are going to have or they are going to raise the standard of the poll staff at the polling station level. So, if we have a polling staff of a standard that is better than what we use to have, then definitely at the collation centre, the accountant and lawyers and so on are not going to have any problems adding up and interpreting the issues that are brought to them up there,” Mr Arhin added.
He called on the EC to scrutinise the professionals to weed out persons who may be affiliated to political parties before engaging them. “All said and done, I think it’s a good idea to have competent people at these centres so that we will not have, for example, 27 being written as 72. We also have to be careful with these professionals and vet them so that we don’t bring in people who are known to be partisan. I think it’s a very important thing they would have to look at. …They need to look at the way they are recruited. The fact that they are professionals…they have to be vetted so that people will not say that before they were appointed they were very active party members and this and that. But let me also say that again, it’s a very good move, let us do it carefully, I will entreat that the commission be very circumspect in the way it goes about it, if we are able to successfully recruit them and get the right calibre of people and with the right kind of training, I think we should be able to get there”.
Source: Ghana/AccraFM.com
