EC not following legal provisions to ensure credible, transparent election – Ex-President Mahama

Former President and flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr John Dramani Mahama, has accused the Electoral Commission (EC) of not following legal provisions that will ensure credible and transparent elections on December 7.

He said the commission, in some cases had introduced new things into this year’s Presidential and Parliamentary elections which was undermining the laid down electoral processes, stressing he feared the situation could lead to electoral violence.

“The late registration of voters has led to late exhibition and the omission of names from the register, gives the EC very little time to provide the final register to parties for scrutiny.

Recently, the commission announced that they have taken 30,000 names from the register and yet they have not published those names, so people are going to get into the polling stations on elections day before realising their names have been omitted,” he said.

The former President raised these sentiments yesterday when he received a delegation from the European Union (EU) at his office in Accra.

Mr Mahama said, as at yesterday political parties had not received names omitted from the register and had not been given any official explanations from the EC as to why those names were omitted.

He said a lot of things had gone wrong with the current EC administration which was very unfortunate, yet it continues to remain adamant.

“Presidential and Parliamentary candidates were given provisional register in filling their nominations which had never happened in the history of our elections.

“So if a voter who believes he or she was a credible voter and had signed my presidential nomination and the EC later removed his or her name from the register, does it means I have faked a name in my filing of nomination?” he asked.

Mr Mahama further expressed his displeasure about the electoral violence which had characterised the electoral process, using the Ayawaso bye-elections as a yardstick.

“Remember that bye-elections held last year led to a quite serious harm to many individuals. There was also a pronouncement of government officials threatening same to happen in this year’s elections,” he said.

The Head of EU Delegation to Ghana, Madam Diana Acconcia said, the objectives of the visit were to hear of the Former President’s vision as well as plead with his party to ensure violence free elections.

“I will like to state few things about how the EU sees this elections, you know Ghana is the cradle of Africa’s democracy, a reason why the EU will thoroughly observe ongoing electoral process,” she said.

BY BERNARD BENGHAN