The Electoral Commission (EC) of Ghana cannot be blamed for the uncertainty in the date for this year’s elections, Dr Charles Wereko-Brobby, Chief Policy Analyst of the Ghana Institute for Public Policy Options (GIPPO), has opined.
According to him, assertions by some Members of Parliament that the posture of the Chair of the EC, Charlotte Osei, was making it difficult for the draft bill on the election date to be passed do not hold up because the EC has finished making its inputs into the draft bill.
“The EC has come out with a timetable that said we are preparing for November 7. The EC has sat down with the Committee on Constitutional, Legal, and Parliamentary Affairs, and have agreed a legislation. It is not the EC’s job to draft a legislation, that is the job of the Attorney General and, as far as I know, the AG has drafted and gazetted the first draft of the bill,” Mr Wereko-Brobby noted, adding: “So when you hear somebody saying that Charlotte Osei’s posture is making it difficult to pass this legislation, you ask yourself: ‘What has that got to do with her?’ The EC has finished with its input, the Attorney General has drafted the bill, and it is up to parliament now to take the bill through the processes.”
Dr Wereko-Brobby, popularly known as Tarzan, was speaking on Joy FM’s news analysis programme Newsfile on Saturday May 21.
He stated that the former Chair of the Electoral Commission, Dr Kwadwo Afari Gyan, soon after the election petition hearing in the aftermath of the 2012 elections, set up a committee for electoral reforms and that committee unanimously agreed that the date be changed, but the all the stakeholders have sat down till the “the last minute” where things seemed to be getting out of hand.
“I lay the blame not only on the EC but parliament …it is part of the last-minute attitude, that the time is not there yet,” the former CEO of the Volta River Authority said, further stating that: “So, the problem we are faced with is not delays by the EC. The problem we are faced with is that we have sat around for so long that simply going through the processes is being delayed but then somebody who is Deputy Minority leader comes out and says: ‘I don’t like Charlotte Osei’s posture and that is going to delay [the passage of the bill].’
