IMANI Africa blasts Ghana's Electoral Commission over ‘fake transparency’ gimmick

Policy think tank, IMANI Africa, has said an ongoing campaign by the Electoral Commission (EC) to present itself as transparent ahead of the upcoming Ghana elections on December 7, 2020, is merely a ploy.

The Civil Society Organisation has accused the electoral body of faking its avowed transparency stance, describing it as part of a “propaganda and PR machinery” aimed at hoodwinking the public to forget the real transparency issues at the Commission.

“Having hired sleek PR agencies and sidelined the career public servants in its communications department, the new management of the Electoral Commission has been churning out non-stop messaging meant to convince us all that it is the most transparent organisation on Earth since Adam and Eve found fig-leaves to cover their nakedness.

“The latest episode of this PR-driven ‘transparency binge’ is the decision to dump the national voters register into the public domain without preamble or clear policy,” the think tank said in its periodic publication on issues of national interest called ‘IMANI Alert’.

The latest episode titled “The ‘fake transparency’ of the Electoral Commission” states, among other things, that the EC has failed to address procurement and spending issues that would better demonstrate transparency at the Commission.

“In the lead-up to the registration exercise in late June, the EC refused to address multiple requests to account for the millions of dollars spent on literally brand new equipment, some bought and delivered as recently as 2018 and 2019.

“When the EC was caught out blatantly lying about not having refreshed or replaced its equipment since 2011, it simply retreated into its shell and refused to engage with the very solid and irrebuttable facts about the monies it had spent in very large quantities to buy equipment that it was refusing to acknowledge that it had,” the think tank stated.

Read the latest IMANI Alert on the EC in the attachment below.