EC, others detail election plans to MPs today

• Posted on November 5, 2020November 5, 2020
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

Officials of the Electoral Commission (EC) are to make a statement to Members of Parliament (MPs) today, giving details of their preparedness and planned programmes of action towards the December 7 polls, the Majority Leader and Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu said yesterday.

According to him, the National Security Minister, Albert Kan-Dapaah as well as officials of the National Media Commission (NMC) and the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) would also make presentations to the House.

Mr. Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, who made the announcement, said this followed a special request made by the Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu last Friday for the EC to brief the House and the country at large on the state of its preparedness towards the general election.

“Mr. Speaker, there was another request for the involvement of the security operatives also relating to their state of preparedness and other connected matters as well as the NCCE and NMC,” he stated and added this would be done after a briefing to the House by the National Security Minister.

“The arrangement is for the Minister in charge of National Security to give us a briefing and we shall incline to a committee to listen to all these other players, including the NCCE and National Media Commission,” he explained and added, “We hope it will be at 11:00 am after the Minister’s briefing.”

Minority Leader

In a response to the announcement, the Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu said, “We look forward to hearing from the EC tomorrow, but it appears that the Majority Leader has added others. I heard him mention the Media Commission and NCCE.

“Our request was specific for the EC to give us briefing on their preparedness for the presidential and parliamentary elections,” he explained that it is “because we need to ascertain the BVDs that we procured for them will move beyond registration. We need to understand verification. They procured 75,000 and what is the state of it,” he stated.

He continued that “We want to know either on Election Day we want to go manual and that those equipment are in place; even though inviting NMC and NCCE all the better.”

In respect of the security, Mr. Iddrisu indicated that “we want the Minister of Interior to support the Minister of National Security, and this time the IGP must be in attendance, because we want to understand the deployment the Ghana Police Service did across the country – to every constituency and polling station. We need to know who goes where on the day of elections.”

But the Majority Leader said, “We are inviting all these persons because my ministry had already organised this. Initially the information that came to us was that, we exclude the media on the day of the holding of elections.

“Those of us who were there, including the Hon Inusah Fuseini didn’t think that it was proper to cut the media out. I reiterated the point that, Mr. Speaker, we just want transparency and accountability on the part of the major stakeholders,” he stressed.

“Once we have the assurances, all of us will be very clear in our minds as to the direction of the conduct of the elections. Mr. Speaker, the Minority Leader is making another demand as to who goes where and that is a legitimate request if it does not offend any national security consideration and the matter has to be laid bare.

“I believe the operators know what is best for this country, particularly for the conduct of this election,” he asserted.

By Ernest Kofi Adu, Parliament House