I side with EC boss - Allotey Jacobs

Central Regional Chairman of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) Allotey Jacobs has disclosed that he stands with Madam Charlotte Osei, the Electoral Commissioner for disqualifying some political parties.

According to him, the woman went by the law in executing the commission’s decision so it is unfortunate that everyone is criticizing her.

To him, he thinks the affected political parties who were recently given a second chance by the Supreme Court to correct the errors on their forms are equally liable for what befell them.

Chairman Allotey Jacobs, explained that if all the political parties had not taken for granted the constitution regulation of having offices in the regions and constituencies, there would have been no need for disqualification.

He could not understand why a party with offices and employees in them will have their people endorsing other candidates as well.

“It therefore means that the parties acquired the offices for the purpose of just going to register the party and bargain for positions in case there is a second round they have to throw their weight behind a likely to win political party”, he observed on Peace FM on Wednesday.

He quizzed that those political parties sometimes need to be questioned on what went wrong on their nomination forms because they are supposed to have offices and the offices are supposed to have officers who could have done the job.

“They do this and when the woman pounces on them, they fight her. She has now swallowed her words back and peace should prevail”, Allotey Jacobs recounted.

The Electoral Commission of Ghana announced on 10th October 2016 that it had disqualified 13 out of 17 candidates aspiring to contest to be elected to the high office of President from taking part in the 2016 Presidential Elections.

Some the parties challenged their disqualification and won in court. One of such party is the PPP led Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom whose victory at the Accra High Court was challenged at the Supreme Court by the EC.