African Electoral Institute (AEI) says maintaining heavy military security with the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Jean Mensa is needless.
This comes on the back of social media posts that the heavy military security detail assigned to Electoral Commissioner Jean Mensah has been withdrawn.
In a statement, the AEI indicated that it sees no issue with the decision to withdraw the military with madam Mensa, “as it believes the Electoral Commission’s functions are inherently civil and non-combative.
“Given that the EC is not at war with any external forces, the AEI questions the need for heavy military security detail in the first place”.
Below is the full statement
PRESS RELEASE
DATE: 23rd FEBRUARY, 2025
TO: ALL MEDIA HOUSES
African Electoral Institute Sees No Issue with the Withdrawal of EC Chair’s Security Detail
The African Electoral Institute (AEI) has learned from reliable sources that the heavy military security detail assigned to Electoral Commissioner Jean Mensah has been withdrawn.
The AEI sees no issue with this decision, as it believes the Electoral Commission’s functions are inherently civil and non-combative.
Given that the EC is not at war with any external forces, the AEI questions the need for heavy military security detail in the first place.
Instead, African Electoral Institute recommends providing the electoral commissioner with a civilian security detail, similar to what her predecessors had.
AEI urges the EC to prioritize its core functions of ensuring electoral integrity, which should be its primary focus, thus upholding transparent, accountable, and credible elections rather than maintaining needless heavy military security details around the Chair.
SIGNED
Joshua Adjin-Tettey
Director of Communications and External Relations
0540904550
About Us:
African Electoral Institute ( AEI) is a Civil Society Organisation (CSO) founded to deliver sustainable electoral solutions to Emerging and Developed Democracies to strengthen, augment, and build electoral stakeholders capacity and participation on electoral issues through electoral education on voter’s rights and freedom, electoral research, election monitoring, election observation, election results collation, election security awareness and training of polling agents and elections directors underscoring the fact that “elections are won at the polling stations’’ and the participation of all identifiable electoral stakeholders in an electoral process such as Political Parties, Governmental Institutions, underpinning transparency and accountability for a free, fair, and credible elections in Africa and the wider world.
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