Assessment of 2020 election: 'We tend to gloss over our achievements' - Jean Mensa

Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Madam Jean Mensa, has said it is important that having successfully carried out the 2020 General Elections amidst the unprecedented circumstances of a global pandemic, we pause as a country to celebrate the successes achieved together as a nation in carrying out Elections under such circumstances.

She said with decorum and a level of efficiency that earned us the admiration of our neighbours across the sub-region and the international community as a whole, why should we gloss over our achievements while the international community applauds us.

"Why should we gloss over our achievements while the international community applauds us?" she rhetorically asked.

In a speech delivered by the Chairperson during the assessment of the 2020 election, she said we should collectively examine the challenges faced in the electoral processes of 2020 and identify what did not work and why.

“This is important to gain insight and understanding of why certain targets were not achieved,” she said.

“As a nation, as a Commission and as stakeholders, it is important that we recognize the feats we achieved through the 2020 electoral processes for the purpose of documenting best practices and experience and to ensure that the successful strategies we adopted do not fall through the cracks of inordinate fault-finding and critique. Constructive critique is a vital part of any institutional-building and learning process, but so is the celebration of success!,” she added.

“As state institutions, we tend to gloss over our achievements. Instead, as a country, our default mode is to cast assessments of public initiatives or exercises in the mould of fault-finding missions armed with a fine-tooth comb, seeking earnestly to find fault. Sadly, we are slow to recognise where we have put good processes and systems in place, much less document them. In a bid to improve upon our past performance, we rush to propose new recommendations when the old processes and structures are working very well. We need to be guided by the adage that ‘if it ain't broke, don’t fix it.”

At the assessment of the 2020 election with the IPAC at Alisa hotel on Tuesday, she said there should be no rush to propose recommendations for processes that are already working well.

“We must remember that we all will have to live with the recommendations that we make. But equally, let us not be slow to propose changes that address real challenges. Again, we must remember that we will have to live with the changes we failed to make.”