Source: Manasseh Azure Awuni
It is no doubt that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) decisively won the 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections. The party and the incoming administration are basking not only in the glory of the electoral victory but also in the overwhelming goodwill of Ghanaians, who feel liberated from the vicious administration of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
The celebratory mood should, however, not shut critical voices from speaking up against the danger the winning party nearly plunged Ghana into. We may not be this lucky in subsequent elections.
It is even more worrying that the Electoral Commission (EC) is being blamed instead of the NDC, which orchestrated the madness we have witnessed at the collation centres.
The voting on December 7 was peaceful, except for a handful of isolated cases that are a regular feature in our election.
After the voting, the ballots were sorted and counted in the presence of political party agents, independent election observers, the media, and the general public.
The results were announced at the polling stations. They were recorded and signed by officials of the EC and representatives of the parties. Many of them were captured on video cameras.
According to our electoral procedures, the next stage is the collation of polling station results at designated constituency centres.
Here again, all the political parties have representatives who monitor the collation. Journalists and independent election observers are there to witness the process.
Unlike the voting, sorting and counting of ballots that take place at the polling stations, activities at the collation centres have very low risks of manipulation. It is the simplest of the electoral processes.
The parties and the EC meet to add the certified numbers recorded at the polling stations. Yes, it is a simple addition of numbers, after which the party or candidate with the most votes in the constituency is declared winner.
The winner of the presidential election is declared by the chair of the EC after the votes obtained by the candidates at the constituencies are added.
We have often been told that elections are won or lost at the polling stations. The NDC and NPP, in this election, tallied their own results from the certified copies they were given at the polling stations. Both parties knew their fate from the polling station results before heading to the constituency collation centres.
The point I have been trying to make up to this stage is that the constituency collation centre should not have any controversy unless participants in the process are either extremely stupid or intolerably dishonest.
Everybody playing a function at the constituency collation centre—the EC officials and the party agents—are supposed to have the same certified results from the polling stations across the constituency. So, when we voted peacefully and counted the votes at the polling stations without incidents, we should have scaled all the thorny hurdles feared ahead of December 7.
Unfortunately, the NDC’s National Communication Officer, Sammy Gyamfi, called a press conference after the process ended at the polling stations. At that press conference, he asked supporters of the NDC to throng the constituency collation centres to protect the party’s votes. He said that call had the blessing of the party’s candidate, President-elect John Dramani Mahama.
That action was needless and irresponsible.
What was the role of the supporters when the NDC already had accredited representatives at the collation centres? It was apparent they had no role except to orchestrate chaos. I said on social media that if someone even wanted to steal the election, as the NDC alleged, it was easier to do that amid the confusion.
Live television footage showed that some electoral officers returning to the constituency collation centres did not have access to the buildings. They were blocked by party supporters, who wanted to force their way into the centres and the police fought to keep them at bay. Some election officials threw ballot boxes over the fence.
The ensuing chaos nationwide got out of hand in some constituencies. In Damongo in the Savannah Region, the EC’s office was set ablaze, and an official of the EC was killed by a stray bullet.
We also saw footage of an EC official who declared the parliamentary results of a constituency in Accra under duress. He was surrounded by NDC members, including the MP for Ningo Prampram. Visibly shaken, he missed his words and the figures, and they were put in his mouth by the NDC members who sandwiched him.
The EC got the clearance of the court to conduct a re-collation of the parliamentary results of nine constituencies. So far, the Commission has re-collated seven of the constituencies and declared candidates of the governing NPP winners in all seven constituencies.
Some lawyers with a better appreciation of our electoral laws have faulted the court’s ruling and the EC’s re-collation, which they say are alien to established practices. I will leave the legal arguments to the lawyers and focus on what occasioned the chaos at the collation centres.
The disturbances at the collation centres and the delay should be blamed on the NDC, and not the EC. The massing up of the party supporters delayed collation.
If the Vice President and presidential candidate of the NPP, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, had not conceded defeat early enough to douse the rising tension and the NPP’s supporters had also massed up in equal measure at the collation centres, we would have had a different story about our election.
If the margin of victory in this election had been narrow, our nation may have erupted in flames. And it would be dishonest to blame the EC and leave out the role of the political parties, especially the NDC.
The NDC efficiently collated its results from the polling stations, but the claim that the NDC won because the NPP couldn’t cheat is nonsense. Ghanaians were angry. Some of us had predicted, long before Election Day, that the NPP would lose. In any case, if cheating in elections were that easy, the NDC would not sit and watch the NPP monopolise it. The NDC are not saints.
The EC has, indeed, lost considerable credibility. In the days of Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan days, accusations of bias against the EC could be easily dismissed by right-thinking members of the public. In recent years, our Electoral Commission has been one of the state institutions that have suffered serious integrity deficits because of the actions of the appointing authority and the body language of some of the Commissioners of the EC. That should, however, not absolve the political parties of wrongdoing. The EC alone cannot be responsible for peaceful elections. The political parties, security, the general public and the courts play key roles.
By interfering with the collation, the NDC exonerated the EC of the chaos at the collation centres. What excuse would the EC have given for the delay if the collation centres had not been thronged by party supporters? What excuse would the EC have given for calling for re-collation if the processes had not been disrupted by rowdy party supporters, during which some electoral materials were destroyed?
Even if the EC committed grave offences in the contested constituencies, as alleged by the NDC, the NDC has given the Commission an umbrella to shelter from the scorching sun of accountability.
If we allow what has happened to continue, political parties will disrupt future collations and force their candidates to be declared winners, knowing that court challenges can take years to reverse stolen verdicts of our elections.
Despite challenges to our democracy, our election is more transparent than those of more advanced democracies such as the United States. A few months ago, I received a mail here in the U.S. that included an election registration form. I was instructed to discard it if I was not qualified to register to vote.
In Ghana, voter registration is done with the supervision of party agents. Party agents monitor the printing of ballot papers. The parties are involved in the distribution of the ballot. They are given the list of persons on the voters’ register, and on Election Day, they know the total number of people registered to vote in every polling station.
They are allowed to count the numbers that show up to vote at each polling station and check them against those recorded by the EC’s biometric verification devices. The political parties also police the sorting and counting of ballots. They are represented at the constituency, regional and national collation
So, cheating in U.S. elections is easier than cheating in Ghana’s elections.
We often claim that our election has advanced from using opaque ballot boxes to transparent ones. However, an opaque ballot isn’t a problem if the citizens are transparent. In the United States, many people vote through the post office, which are not transparent ballot boxes.
In the 2020 election, 43% of voters in the U.S. did not go to the polling booths because of the pandemic. They voted by mail. What this means is that over 65 million people trusted not only the election officials. They trusted the postal service. They trusted their fellow citizens to do what was right.
In Ghana, we cannot imagine that possibility. Mailed ballots from Ashanti, the Volta and strongholds of political parties would disappear if we tried that here. And this is an indictment on all of us, not only the Electoral Commission.
In the 2004 election, I worked as an election official in the Krachi West Constituency. Like me, more than 95% of the people who work as officers on Election Day are not employees of the EC. They are teachers, lawyers, nurses, civil society activists, students and general citizens who apply to perform roles. The EC staff is a handful, providing administrative and oversight duties on Election Day.
So, the official in Techiman South who issued presidential ballot papers and tore out the first candidate on the ballot may not necessarily be an employee of the EC. He is a representation of a dishonest society. He represents you and me.
Make no mistake. I’m not here to absolve the EC of possible wrongdoing. Having worked as an election officer and covered three elections as a journalist, I know a bit about our electoral process.
I firmly believe a flawed election can have culprits other than the EC. And any honest discussion of the 2024 election crisis should not leave out the NDC, who incited their members to throng the constituency collation centres.
