The electoral commission has defended its decision to announce the results of the December 7 presidential elections within 24 hours.
The NDC has kicked against any hasty decision from the EC following its earlier announcement.
But addressing the media, Chairperson for the commission Madam Jean Mensa assured adequate measures have been deployed to ensure timely transmissions of all sixteen regions.
She also noted that the CI 127 governing the elections allows for constituency results to be sent to the regions for subsequent forwarding to the EC head office unlike before when the head office received results directly.
According to her, the EC has the confidence of meeting the said target of calling the elections within twenty-four hours
She quizzed “if you have the results, why sit on it. Why sit on the results when you have the result?” adding that, “we all know that our media houses have in the past been able to present the results within some ten hours of the poll, and so if you put in place systems to ensure that you receive the results on time, why the panic?”.
“I think the panic should rather be if the EC says it will declare the election after one week, then we should be panicking. But if you are bringing in efficiency and allaying the fears and suspicions of persons, I think that this should be commended and encouraged and rather we should all work together to achieve this.”
She intimated that “I think it’s a very simple process. Our processes still remain virtually manual and the EC is not engaging in some complex electronic transmission of results to enable us to achieve that.”
The new results transfer process
Madam Jean Mensah explained the new process “it’s still a very simple process. When you come to the polling station, the results are collated there. From the polling station, the results are moved to the constituency collation center and they all put together on that collation sheet. This time we introduced a regional dimension. So, rather than the constituency results coming to the commission, it will go to the regional offices and the party agents are fully aware of this. This is in the law, it is in CI127 that governs the elections. So, it is not a creation of the commission.
She went on “it is important to note that that law was a collaboration between the EC and parliament [subsidiary legislation committee]. So, the CI 127 has put in place where another level, where all the constituency results go to the regions and the regions collate the constituency results on the regional collation sheet and those results are transferred to the EC.”
“What we have simply done is to train and build capacity for efficient delivery of that service. So, it’s nothing different, it’s not figures appearing in the news or from us,” she added.
Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/103.5FM
