Mahama confused: No Hacking of 2016 results

• Posted on May 24, 2019May 24, 2019
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

A Deputy Director of the Electoral Commission (EC) in charge of operations has denied former President John Mahama’s allegation of hacking in the last elections.

Mr. Samuel Tettey, who was the Director of Elections during the 2016 elections, said the former President got it all wrong regarding the electronic transmission of results, which he said was not what was agreed upon as Mr. Mahama implied.

The EC, he said, does not understand his allegation because a report about the elections does not mention anything like hacking.

The law, he said, stated that the manual transmission was to be the mode of transmitting results and not the electronic medium, adding that “the electronic transmission was not to be used to declare results.”

Talking about the last elections with an unquestionable institutional memory of the EC where he has worked for many years, Mr. Tettey said that staff of the election management body were not even trained and primed for the handling of the electronic transmission of the election results.

“The EC was not prepared for the electronic transmission of results,” he added.

He also highlighted some of the challenges the commission faced a few days to the polls.

Speaking to DAILY GUIDE editors during a visit to the newspaper house, he painted a disturbing picture of a commission, whose house was not in order a few days ahead of the crucial elections.

“Two to three days to the election, we were still purchasing equipment for the transmission,” he said.

‘Hacking?’ he asked rhetorically.

“I don’t know what he meant,” he said in reference to the former President’s haranguing about a perceived hacking of the election results.

“A consultant was brought from Zambia or so by the EC to advise the institution about the electronic transmission of results, but because of the inherent challenges being experienced during the trials the man advised against it,” he said.

The then EC Chairperson, Charlotte Osei, was insistent on using the electronic transmission for the transmission of results, regardless of the consultant’s advice and what the parties had agreed.

He said the man abandoned the project and left for his country because the EC wanted the electronic transmission at all costs, but the consultant realized it was not going to work.

The refusal of Charlotte Osei to heed good counsel about the unfeasibility of the electronic transmission mode and the eventual frustration of the Zambian consultant and his departure from the country is another example of the unilateralism with which she managed the EC.

It would appear that there was something about the electronic transmission of results which inured to her interest and others, hence her insistence on it, regardless of the general opposition to it. 

Former President John Mahama, in a presentation in Oxford, claimed the last elections were rigged in the favour of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) presidential candidate, adding that the system was hacked.

His claim of hacking of the system was in consonance with the former EC Chairperson because she also told Ghanaians during the restless moments of the wait for the declaration of the results that the system had been hacked and compromised. 

By A.R. Gomda