‘Implement Electoral Reforms’

Reverend Professor Emmanuel Asante
The National Peace Council (NPC) has asked the Electoral Commission (EC) not to cover up any challenges it may be saddled with in implementing the recommendations by the Supreme Court, regarding the electoral reforms.

It said the Commission should rather be open in order to get civil society to help in surmounting those challenges.

Reverend Professor Emmanuel Asante, National Chairman of the Peace Council who was speaking with TV3 in Accra, said the EC should let civil society know what difficulties they were facing in respect of the implementation of the recommendations by the nine Supreme Court justices.

‘This will enable civil society and the general public to support them in ensuring that come 2016, we will not encounter any problems’, he said.

The Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church of Ghana asked the EC to also engage the various political parties in finding solutions to problems they may seem to have.

‘I want to believe that they do have some challenges but they should be able to surmount these challenges,’ he charged.

Rev. Asante said, ‘You cannot talk about peace in the country without talking about justice. So if you have eminent judges making a recommendation for reforms with the Electoral Commission, then you are talking about people who say ‘let’s put this in place to avoid the kind of situation to cause us to go back to the courts to seek justice.”

He said the recommendations by the judges offer the very foundation of peace in the country stating, ‘We wish that the EC will take these recommendations seriously and begin to have them implemented because they are very important and are crucial for the peace of this country and for peaceful elections.’

Results of the 2012 presidential election were contested at the Supreme Court by the then presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and two others – his running mate, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia and the then Chairman of NPP Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey.

The Electoral Commission was one of the three respondents that were cited by the landmark petition; and following admission by the Chairman of the EC, Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, that there were some ‘administrative errors’ during the December 2012 elections, the Supreme Court recommended some reforms to ensure sanity in the next elections.

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By Cephas Larbi