NALAG Blames EC For Poor Handling Of Polls

The President of the National Association of Local Authorities of Ghana (NALAG), Mr Akwasi Asare Ankomah, has expressed the association’s disappointment at the manner in which the Electoral Commission (EC) handled the just-ended district assembly and unit committee elections.

He accused the EC of not living up to expectation and therefore described it as having failed the nation. Mr Ankomah said in an interview at Koforidua that the EC and the National Commission on Civic education (NCCE) should be equally blamed for the low voter turnout. He said the EC, a day before the elections, promised Ghanaians that all was set for the elections, only to postpone the elections in some areas because the ballot papers were not ready. Mr Ankomah has therefore called on the EC to apologise to the electorate in the affected areas for the inconvenience.

He attributed the low voter turnout to inadequate public education on the matter to enable the electorate to understand issues of grassroots participation, which, according to him, is the responsibility of the NCCE. He said it is unfortunate that most people perceived the assembly members to be people who could solely fund development projects, forgetting that they lobby for projects and that even depends on the availability of funds. Mr Ankomah, who was the Presiding Member of the New Juaben District Assembly, said NALAG, foresaw that the elections would be a flop as the unit committee was under subscribed and therefore suggested its postponement to the EC but it was to no avail.

He said out of more than 16,000 electoral areas in the country, only 1,000 were subscribed and this was enough for the elections to be postponed. Mr Ankomah said the EC’s explanation that some unit committee members did not submit their photographs at the appropriate time to justify the postponement is not tangible.