Ministers/DCEs don't have automatic right to polling stations

Ho, Nov. 12, GNA - Regional Ministers and Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives would require the permission of presiding officers on Election Day to enter polling stations, Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, Electoral Commissioner said on Wednesday.

He said the same was required of political party executives. Dr Afari-Gyan said this at a training programme for media practitioners in Ho aimed at sharpening their election reporting skills. The programme was sponsored by the Netherlands Institute for Multi-Party Democracy and facilitated by KAB Governance Consult. The Electoral Commissioner said the presiding officer was in charge of proceedings at the Polling Stations and that all other visitors had the status of observers and could not assume any power above those of the presiding officer. Dr Afari-Gyan said security personnel and party agents at the Polling Stations were not to take part in the actual administration of the elections.

He said the inbuilt integrity of Ghana's electoral process made mistakes traceable to where it occurred and that manipulations were hardly possible.

Dr Afari-Gyan said political parties had the opportunity to appoint agents to witness the process at all levels to satisfy themselves of its transparency. He said the Inter-Party Advisory Committees (IPAC) were instituted at the instance of the Electoral Commission in 1994 for consensus building on electoral issues and that the Committees were not statutory. Dr Afari-Gyan said it was therefore out of place for political parties to make unconstitutional demands on the Electoral Commission. He reiterated that the Electoral Commission was by law not subject to control by any authority in the country. Dr Afari-Gyan entreated Journalists to study the electoral process carefully to enable them carry out their duties professionally He observed that elections rigging could not only happen on Election Day and with ballot papers only, stressing that unscientific polls by journalists intended to influence voters also amounted to rigging.

Dr Afari-Gyan said gerrymandering, organising minors to register skewed voter's transfers constitute rigging plots. Miss Laurentia Kpatakpa Volta Regional Director of the Commission took the journalists through the election process, including plans for movement of ballot papers, counting, collating and declaration of results.