Franklin Cudjoe Writes: I Get So Irritated Whenever I Hear The EC Chairperson Ask People To Trust Her And Her Gang | Features

I get so irritated whenever I hear the Electoral Commission ( EC) chairperson ask people to trust her and her gang. This was the same EC that promised my Chiefs from SALL in a meeting on November 30, 2020, that their constituents will vote in the 2020 elections.

I personally thanked her. Six days later, on the eve of the 2020 elections, she authorised the release of a letter to the media at midnight that simply said my people couldn’t vote. Just like that. No explanation was given.

That inglorious and treacherous act tilted the balance of power in Ghana’s Parliament, giving the ruling NPP party a single majority in Parliament. Simply put, this was gerrymandering orchestrated by the EC perfectly executed with the connivance of the government. Judicial chicanery thwarted our efforts at getting justice. A high court judge recently ruled that he had no jurisdiction to deal with our electoral fraud case he had entertained for three years. Yes. Just like that.

So for four years, my people in SALL had no representation in parliament, saw no single development, dilapidated school, and road infrastructure just got worse. And yet we paid taxes!

This same Electoral Commission lied to Ghanaians that all biometric voter equipment were purchased in 2011 and couldn’t be used for the 2020 elections because they had reached their end of life. Never mind that there was abundant evidence from parliamentary records, the Controller and Accountant General, and finance ministry statements that not all the equipment was purchased in 2011.

That close to 4000 of such expensive equipment were purchased in 2016, 2018, and 2019. These same equipment had been successfully used in the 2016 elections and December 2019 district level elections and the referendum in 2018. Strangely, all the voter equipment died in January 2020, just three weeks after being used for the district level elections in December 2019.

When the Electoral Commission eventually had its way to purchase fresh and expensive new voter equipment, they rigged the tender and fraudulently awarded marks to its favourite bidders. In one instance, the Electoral Commission invented a new arithmetic formula that said 83+15 = 106, being the marks awarded the successful bidders when the next favoured bidder had a correctly summed total mark of 102. This infuriating conclusion led the tender committee chairman to recuse himself from the process.

And yet, the Electoral Commission went ahead and wasted nearly $90m on the new equipment and saddled us with a new register and added cost of organising elections, almost to the amount of $60m. This was one of the major reasons Ghana’s economy tanked and got junk-rated as we couldn’t pay our domestic and international debts.

These are part of the reasons IMANI and myself have been suspicious of the Electoral Commission and called them out. It has nothing to do with the laughable, contrived political narrative that IMANI wanted a contract or IMANI principals wanted the Electoral Commissioner’s position freely spewed by mindless political footsoldiers, their paymasters and a newspaper that publishes Daily Rubbish.

So, yes. you can trust if you want, but be vigilant.”