Integrity of electoral process should be reviewed - Mrs Edusei

Mrs Philomena Edusei, Central Regional Director of the Electoral Commission (EC) has suggested that the in-built integrity of the electoral process should be reviewed to help identify officials who may decide to go contrary to the laid down procedure.

She said this was as a result of the difficulty of the EC to get committed people to do the job and also the difficulty in determining their neutrality; adding that those who wilfully do wrong during elections should be prosecuted.

She made the recommendation at a two-day review meeting on the 2012 general elections organized by the EC in collaboration with the Department for International Development (DFID) and KAB Governance Consult (KGC) in Cape Coast.

The meeting, which was held for the Central Region from Thursday, March 14 to Friday March 15, was attended by about 50 participants including political parties, election officials, faith-based organizations, traditional rulers, civil society organizations and the media.

It was under the theme, “Enhancing the credibility of the 2012 elections”.

Mrs Edusei said during the Biometric Voter Registration (BVR), a total of 1,231,513 eligible voters were registered out o f the region’s total population of 2,201,863 saying all who were eligible to be registered were captured.

She said training programmes were organized for a total of 11,029 election officials towards the elections whilst public education and publicity were carried out in various communities in the region and that the elections took place in all 2,192 polling centres in the region.

She said some of the challenges before and during the elections included the constant breakdown of kits and printers, the long period of work on the Election Day affected the quality of work of the returning officers; and due to the large number of voters at some polling centres, voting had to be adjourned to the next day, December 8, 2012.

Mrs Edusei recommended that repair and servicing centres be set up in each region to address the issue of machine breakdowns, proper care be taken of materials, more time be allocated for public education and an extra returning officer be recruited purposely for only collation at the collation centre.

Participants raised concerns about among others, the high number of rejected ballots, voters lack of knowledge on how to go about the voting process, biased security personnel and election officials at the poling centres and also the need for the EC to continue registering persons who turn 18years from time to time instead of waiting every four years.

Mrs Pauline Adobea Dadzawa, the EC Commissioner for Central Region, gave the assurance that all issues raised would be critically and appropriately dealt with in order to enhance the process in forthcoming elections and that the EC was working towards continuous registration of persons who turn 18years.

Also present at the meeting were Mr Christian Owusu Parry, Director of Public Affairs at the EC and Mr Kwesi Afriyie Badu, a lawyer and facilitator of the programme.