Challenges faced during DLEs unfortunate, EC must take responsibility – CODEO

The Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) has described as unfortunate, challenges that bedevilled the District Level Elections held nationwide on Tuesday, December 19.

CODEO blamed the Electoral Commission (EC) for not living up to its task and urged it to do better.

Reports of non-functioning of the Biometric Verification Device (BVD) used for verification and delays in the distribution of voting items to some centres hampered the process in some areas.

Also, voting in some centres was postponed due to errors detected on the ballot papers.

National Coordinator for CODEO, Albert Arhin said the Electoral Commission must take lessons from this process.

“I saw some places where, for example, if the candidate’s name is Arhin, they put maybe Kofi or Kwame there, which shouldn’t have been the case. That is putting somebody’s name under a different picture or something. These mistakes should have been corrected by sending people. If for example if you are printing for a particular region or a district, the district director should have been there with the team to be doing some of these corrections.”

“So that is managerial. Because we have been having some of these experiences we should have taken a cue and learnt our lessons so we don’t repeat these mistakes. But whether we like it or not the blame still lies on the doorstep of the EC because they are the ones running this show.”

The National Democratic Congress also stated that the EC must take responsibility for the turn of events in the elections.

Mustapha Gbande, Deputy Secretary of the NDC said “Election management is not cast in stone. It is about the experience, it is about consultation, it is about dealing with people who know the work better than you to help you build a solid, transparent, dependable, credible system that will give a free and fair election to the people of Ghana. These mistakes are avoidable.”

“Someone must take full responsibility beyond apologising. She has messed up an election system that we all saw clearly and cautioned her and she didn’t listen. When we were speaking she said the NDC is accusing her. And today we are at the same root and you are saying we should let go.”