Former President John Dramani Mahama has said he will not accept the results of the 2020 presidential elections if the processes leading to it are flawed.
He explained at a press conference at the headquarters of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in Accra on Thursday, September 24 that the Electoral Commission, Ghana (EC) has carried itself in a way that does not engender confidence among some political parties, ahead of the elections.
Addressing journalists on the alleged missing of some names on the recently compiled voters register, the NDC flagbearer said the EC has sidestepped an important stakeholder in Ghana’s electoral process, the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) and this has resulted in untold challenges of the elections management body as well as the parties.
“There is something happening in this exhibition that we have never seen since 1992. We have been taking part in registration and exhibition of voter registers and some of the areas where a whole segment of names, thousands of names can get missing from the register is unacceptable.
“That is why we are saying that it is the widespread scale of the incident and the quantum that we are dealing with that are the problem.”
‘I won’t’
For him, the exhibition is usually characterised by low turnout and so the situation will get out of hand on elections day.
“So, if you go to those stations where 700 people’s names are missing , and 700 people’s names are missing, if they don’t come for exhibition, how are you going to capture them and replace them in the register.
“That is the problem we are talking about. All these will not arise if this particular Electoral Commission had a close collaboration with the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC), that is what IPAC is for.
“IPAC had made our Electoral Commission one of the best in the whole of Africa. Indeed other, Electoral Commissions are copying our ideas and created groups of political parties where issues are discussed and consensus is reached on how to deal with them.
“The present Electoral Commission has phobia for IPAC. They are even afraid to call a meeting of IPAC and when the Electoral Commission says they have the mandate, that is the result we are seeing today because you want to do things yourself.
“The political parties are critical stakeholders in the electoral process and all of them must feel confident that they have participated in the processes leading up to the elections. That is what makes it easier for a party to accept that it has lost the elections.
“When you go in secrecy and do all kind of things and the processes are flawed, you don’t expect me to accept the results of a flawed election. I won’t.”
By Laud Nartey|3news.com|Ghana