A very peaceful election
The Deputy Commissioner of the Electoral Commission, Dr. Bossman Asare, spoke at the event about holding an efficient and peaceful election on behalf of the Electoral Commissioner Ms Jean Mensah.
He first of all apologized for the absence of the commissioner and said there were a series of events in the country, hence most of their officers were occupied with national duties. He said “All officers are busy with other work, so the chairperson won’t be able to make it”
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Dr Bossman Asare was confident the commission is an organization that is capable of organizing a free fair and transparent election. He also stated that accountable governance is very critical in any democratic dispensation.
On the upcoming election, he said “This election will go down as the best election. We have doubled down on previous elections and there would be a very successful parliamentary and presidential election”.
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The deputy commissioner said “This year, there have been 18, 774,000 registered voters. This represents more than 55 per cent of the population. It has never happened before. It shows that anyone qualified as a voter is given the opportunity”
Giving more information on the exhibition exercise, Dr Bossman said “For the first time, after the exhibition exercise, there were more than one exhibition exercise. For the first time, political parties were allowed to observe to prevent individuals who didn’t qualify from participating”.
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Talking about filing fees for the presidential nominations he said “The filing fee for the 2020 election was GHC100,0000 per president. The commission came under criticism by some CSOs for such high filing fees. This year (2024), the same amount was maintained. This time, however, the commission did not receive any applause from some CSOs for maintaining the filing fee”.
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This year also the Deputy commissioner said there has been a 25 per cent reduction in filing fees for female candidates and persons with disabilities.
Dr. Bossman reported that many Recruitment officials and technicians have also been employed based on the number of registered voters. So, he was confident that this time there would be a lot of manpower to handle the elections
The deputy commissioner also said Collation officers with backgrounds in either mathematics or statistics have been employed. The instruction for these collation officers is that they should be at the collation centres from 4 pm to help with the collation exercise. However, Dr. Bossman clarified that the returning officer has the main responsibility of announcing the results of the election. This limits the responsibilities of the collation officers to only the collation of results. Speaking more on manpower, the deputy commissioner said each polling station has five officers in different roles to ensure efficiency leading to a free and fair election.
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“Practical training has been given to personnel to equip them with skills to carry out the job” Dr Bossman said
To ensure transparency, the deputy commissioner also said “printing of ballot papers was done with the political parties”. Additionally, he added that the political parties also accompanied the EC officials when ballot boxes and papers were distributed to all constituencies.
In conclusion, the deputy commissioner, Dr Bossman said “We know what we have done in the past so we are convinced in ourselves that we will conduct an excellent election”
