’Inaccurate’ EU EOM report not a fair reflection of 2020 elections – Otokunor

Peter Boamah Otokunor, the Deputy General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress has rejected a report by the European Union’s Election Observation Mission on the 2020 elections.

The EU EOM’s assessment of the election was made public on Tuesday, April 12, 2021, at press conference chaired by Javier Nart, the Chief Observer of the EU Election Observation Mission to Ghana

The EU EOM expressed satisfaction with the overall conduct of the elections, stating that it met international standards.

"The conclusion in the mission's final report is that the elections were efficiently organised, competitive, that voters participated freely in large numbers, and that the process successfully met a range of international standards," Mr. Nart said, adding that the overall conduct of voting was assessed positively in 95 per cent of polling stations observed.

"However, shortcomings already identified by previous EU election observation missions remain, such as the misuse of state resources, the abuse of incumbency, vote-buying, and unregulated campaign finances. These resulted in an uneven playing field."

Speaking on Joy News, Otokunor said that having studied the report carefully, he has come to the conclusion that it is not a fair reflection of the election that was held on December 7, 2020.

Otokunor reasoned that that the elections were fraught with irregularities, some of which the EU EOM captured in their report.

Mr Otokunor explained that this is due to several irregularities and flaws identified in the report.

He questioned the procedure used by the mission in getting their report to Parliament and urged Ghanaians treat it with a pinch of salt.

“They failed to accurately report and discuss all the issues and all the steps…If you look at the procedure, they actually went through the back door even in Parliament and that is where they encountered several problems and they had to go back and forth three times before the instrument was properly laid. So that problem itself was something that was supposed to be reported by the EU.

“…You cannot make that conclusion, you would have to put all the bits and pieces together as part of the process then you can make a conclusive statement on whether it was free and fair.

He also said that the report failed to capture some major development that happened during the elections, including the killing of some persons believed to be NDC supporters.

“We expected that the EU will report on some of these critical issues because you are doing comprehensive monitoring of the elections, so all the fallouts during the registration exercise; the stabbing of Silas Wulochamey in Banda, the shooting at Dormaa Central. These cannot be isolated, if this thing happened in any of the European Countries, it is a big deal, why is it an isolated situation in Ghana?”.

“There is no aspect of this report that talks about security, recommendations that have been made, nothing said on security, I think that is a very big flaw in the monitoring tools that was used by the EU…these are the things they have to look for. Because if you come and monitor all the processes…why didn’t you include security? why were you not monitoring security?” he quizzed.