Nana Akufo-Addo
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has assured the United Nations of a transparent, free, fair, safe and credible elections in Ghana in December.
“At the end of the elections, we shall be proud of ourselves, Africa will have good cause to be proud of us, and the rest of the world will find lessons to learn from us,” Nana Akufo-Addo said on Wednesday, 23 September 2020 in a recorded video delivered at the 75th session of the UN General Assembly at the UN headquarters, New York, United States.
This was the first time in the history of the United Nations that each member state, observer state, and the European Union, was invited to submit a pre-recorded video, delivered by its designated high-level official.
Nana Akufo-Addo also touched on the effect of COVID-19 pandemic on the lives of everyone and the benefits of technology in these difficult times; the need for restructuring of the global financing architecture, to enable access to fresh capital by developing nations and; a call to reform the world body to reflect Africa’s common position on UN reform, as set out in the Ezulwini Consensus.
On the political situation in the sub-region, Nana Akufo-Addo noted that: “It is incumbent on the UN and, indeed, all Member States to lend their support to the efforts being made by ECOWAS to restore normalcy to Mali, and help us defeat the scourge of terrorism.”
The Ghanaian leader further reflected on the 400th-anniversary of the transatlantic slave trade in 2019, at which time Ghana played a significant role by welcoming hundreds of Africans in the diaspora to their root.
He said Ghana has every intention to open its doors to members of the African diaspora who find Ghana a safe haven.
The President’s assurance to the UN came a few days after former President John Mahama said Ghana’s Electoral Commission’s ongoing voter roll exhibition exercise has been fraught with “so much disorder, anarchy and chaos”, adding that the election management body has exhibited “legendary incompetence” with the entire electoral process ahead of the 7 December 2020 and, thus, called on the international community and election observers to step in.
The flagbearer of the biggest opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), told party supporters in the Bono Region on Tuesday, 22 September 2020 that since the EC started the voter register exhibition, “many have gone to check and in many places, there are anomalies, several anomalies that our party has detected”.
“In any exhibition of a register, there’ll be a few anomalies that are normally easy to correct but we also know that anytime we’ve done a registration of voters, we have done it in good time so that if there are anomalies, we can correct them”, he said.
“When this government and the Electoral Commission decided that they were going to do a new register, we warned them that the time left was so short that if you compiled a register and there were fatal flaws in the register, you will not have enough time to do the correction before the election”, the former President observed.
“And let me say a voter register is the most important document in any election. If the voter register is not credible or is full of errors, it makes it difficult to have a free, fair and transparent election”, Mr Mahama noted.
According to him, “as it is, recently, we saw a video of voter registration cards being issued and the video went viral. It turned out that these were EC officers issuing voter cards. Today, the EC issued a statement and admitted that, yes, these cards were being issued at the EC’s offices because of some duplications they had found out. The political parties are the main stakeholders in any election. And, so, while the exhibition of the register is going on, we have our agents at all the polling stations supervising the registration.
“Now, if there was an issue in compiling the register, where the codes of the codes of the various equipment were found to be duplicates, and it was necessary to issue voter cards, why were the political parties not informed.
“And the point even is, if you issue these new voter cards at your district office, how will the people whose cards are affected, know so that they can come and give back the old cards and give out the new cards?” he wondered.
In Mr Mahama’s opinion, “there is so much wrong going on”.
“The incompetence of this Electoral Commission is legendary. We have held elections in this country, we have held voter registrations in this country, but we have never seen a situation where there is so much chaos and disorder in an electoral process”.
He warned: “It has the potential to create crises in our country and that is why at a point, when I spoke, I said that the Electoral Commission should be prepared to take the blame if this country descends into chaos and they dismissed me”.
“Today, we don’t know if we are going to have a credible register because we are not confident in the process that is going on. There is too much anarchy and disorder. We are not sure that we can have a credible register with which to have a free, fair and transparent election”.
“And, therefore, because of the seriousness of the reports I’m receiving from my elections directorate, I’ve decided to curtail my campaign in the Bono Region and go back to Accra to ascertain and verify the reports and to make the views of our party known to Ghana and the rest of the world”, he announced.
Mr Mahama said it was important for the international community to keep its eyes on Ghana’s electoral process so as to ensure the process is clean.
“As things are going, we are not comfortable with the process going to the election and we call on the international community to take an interest in what is happening in Ghana”.
“We want electoral observers to come long in advance; international election observers must be deployed long in advance to supervise the electoral process going into the election. We will make a major statement on this matter in due course, very soon”, he said, adding: “But in the meantime, I’ll suspend the campaign in the Bono Region, there are several constituencies that were expecting us today and tomorrow and the day after. I wish to apologise to them. As soon as this matter is addressed in Accra, I’ll quickly come back and finish the tour of the Bono Region”.