Rebranding EC was parliament’s judgment Call

I often do not have much that is either edifying or meaningful to say about Mr. Kojo (Kwadwo?) Adu-Asare, the former National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for Adentan, in the Greater-Accra Region, but in this rare instance, the so-called presidential staffer is right-on-the-money when Mr. Adu-Asare opines that the decision by Electoral Commissioner Charlotte Kesson-Smith Osei to change the logo of the commission she chairs was totally unnecessary. To be certain, it was a flagrant waste of scarce public monetary resources (See “Your Beauty Alone Re-Brands EC – Adu-Asare” Adomonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 4/18/16).

And just as I did before in the recent past, Mr. Adu-Asare took the prime opportunity to flatter Mrs. Osei quite a bit, except that I found such compliment to be characteristically frivolous but, nevertheless, unmistakably Ghanaian. I don’t for a moment believe that her mere physical cynosure adds anything substantive to the image and/or reputation of the Electoral Commission (EC). To be certain, her legion of conflicting managerial decisions gives quite a spacious room for doubt vis-à-vis her evenhanded ability to steer the highly sensitive affairs of the EC. But then, even as that tired old cliché goes: beauty largely lies in the eyes of the beholder.

This, of course, is no time to indulge in pulchritudinal or esthetic frivolities. For in the end, even as Mr. Adu-Asare himself acknowledges, the strength and enduring thrust of Mrs. Osei’s legacy – absolutely no priapic pun is intended here – would be squarely predicated on the confidence that Ghanaians repose in her competence as the nation’s Chief Returning Officer. I have already observed time and again, that the EC, as a statutory organization or institution, falls squarely under the supervision of Parliament. Thus any decision to change its logo ought to have been initiated in our august House of Representatives.

The choice of what form of logo to settle on ought to have attracted national input, with all artistic Ghanaian citizens being invited to make submissions within a clearly stipulated temporal span. Out of the pool of submissions, a panel of judges could then have been established to make the most appropriate and relevant selection. Prizes could also have been awarded to the top three or four submissions, with honorable mentions being awarded to equally fetching submissions that did not make the cut. The selection could even have been more inclusively done by having selected entries exhibited at the Accra Arts Center and also posted on the web to invite spectator input through the solicitation of votes, after which the most-voted-for-submission would then have been selected.

Instead, what we learn is that the handful of Electoral Commissioners at the EC’s headquarters had met to discuss just this one recently adopted logo and unanimously agreed on their whimsical taste for the same. We even had Commissioner Osei quoted to be vaingloriously asserting, rather lamely, as follows: “We saw it; we liked it; and we adopted it.” At the barest minimum, the convention has been for all statutory institutions to sport our national Coat-of-Arms. Rebranding ought not to mean some capriciously autocratic means of selecting a logo for the EC.

Mr. Adu-Asare also went quite a bit overboard in facilely presuming that her purported beauty alone adequately constituted Mrs. Osei’s radical rebranding of the EC. Americans have a saying that “Beauty is only skin-deep.” In Ghana, we are fond of saying that “Beauty does not really pay; it is character that matters the most.

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