EC chair must be elected, not appointed – Odike proposes

Leader of the United Progressive Party (UPP), Akwasi Addai Odike has proposed that elections must be held for chairpersons of the Electoral Commission.

He posits that appointments of public officials by the President often creates situations that could undermine the development of the country.

He made this known in an interview with Happy FM’s Don Prah on the ‘Epa Hoa Daben’ show where he said: “Why don’t we change our Constitution so that we allow the various commissioners vote to elect one of them as EC chair rather than the President appointing the EC Chair? We have given the President the power to select the heads of a lot of institutions and that is what allows corruption, lies, cronyism and all the things that work against the good of the country. But when you talk about the Constitution, the NDC and the NPP are all silent. No one wants to talk about the revision because they benefit from the Constitution. And that is worrying”.

In his submission, he agreed with Former President Mahama’s view of the current Electoral Commission when he stated that the current EC had failed to live up to its motto of transparency, integrity and fairness.

According to Odike, the EC Chair has been “bias”. However, “it is a system failure that has caused this”.

After almost three months of the Supreme Court hearing, the seven-member panel of the Supreme Court unanimously dismissed former President John Mahama’s application challenging the 2020 election results. According to the Supreme Court, the suit was “without merit.”

Meanwhile, John Dramani Mahama has said that he disagrees with the judgement by Supreme Court on the 2020 Election Petition.

He also noted that the failure of the EC Chairperson to testify has deepened the grave doubts harbored by many Ghanaians about the outcome of the December 2020 presidential election.