Since the advent of the Fourth Republican democratic dispensation in Ghana, Ghanaians have never witnessed a voter exhibition exercise that has recorded over 21,000 missing names in one constituency alone.
However, in the year 2020 (where life has become simpler because of technological advancements) Ghanaians are witnessing such high numbers of missing names on the Voters Register – a massive level of election mismanagement, never seen or recorded in our history.
Ghana’s democratic processes is suffering its most brutal manipulation and assault. The snub of long held consultative processes in the running of elections is so brazen now.
Ghana’s long held peaceful and orderly democracy, and the integrity of its elections and confidence in the election management body (the Electoral Commission-EC) has been whittled away by a new order of chaos, confusion and tension.
As the poor management of the 2020 election process gains notoriety and now epitomised by the most scandalous voter exhibition exercise ever, it gives cause to worry as to how Ghana’s Moral Society: NGOs, CSOs, eminent personalities and mainstream media, have all decided to become quiet spectators, witnessing the unfolding rape and savage attack on the country’s hitherto envied democratic credentials.
It is indeed unconscionable for Moral Society to play mute, feign neutrality and exhibit disinterest, when brazen injustice is being wantonly committed on such a large scale by a reckless Electoral Commission that is no longer exhibits independent but confirms by deeds that it is being remote controlled.
Ordinarily, the façade of a so-called Eminent Group of elders, supposedly appointed to counsel the new EC executive management team and to offer guidance to them, would have been the moral compass to look up to for corrections. But the consistent missteps and mismanagement by the EC, over the period, proves that the body of eminent is but a big white elephant. It is too obvious that the noble personalities were brought together as a face saving gimmick just to help shore up public confidence in the EC whose image has fast declined. The idea of the imminent men, may have been a smart game that the new EC leadership and its paymasters played on the Ghanaian public.
One cannot help, but be flabbergasted that the noble personalities of Pastors, Imams, distinguished statesmen and retired public servants, who were put on that committee of eminent personalities, and have now become “Simpa Panyins”, are still holding on to their irrelevant membership of the committee.
For nothing at all, I expected Nana Ato Dadzie, a former Chief of Staff under whose watch Ghana witnessed its first ever democratic transition, to have reminded this EC leadership as to how they have destroyed and eroded public confidence, and as result, announce his resignation from that Committee of “Simpa Panyins”.
As it stands now, should there not be enough voices to straighten the path of this arrogant, disrespectful and non performing EC, Ghana’s 2020 election is bound to suffer chaos and rejection, with dangerous attendant consequences.
Whilst I heard Zenator Rawlings, MP and daughter of a former President on radio, screaming that over 2,000 registered voters in her Klottey Korley Constitiency have been delisted from the Voters Register, I wondered what has become of her father, Mr Boom. The man who preached Positive Defiance, as a tool for dealing with situations, is another “Simpa Panyin” who sees no evil and speak no evil in our governance, because his party NDC is in opposition.
In Akan, we say, sɛ opanyin tina fie, ma mbɔfra wi nanka a, sɛ yɛbu nanka wi fuor a, yɛ kan no Kate ho bi (if an elder sits aloof for kids to eat a python, he the elder will be counted among python eaters).
Simply put: Evil triumphs when good men become “Simpa Panyins”.
Written by: Abena Benewaa, Koforidua
