Calls On Un And Ecowas To Conduct 2012 Elections Are Childish- James Agyenim Boateng

A deputy Minister Information, James Agyenim Boateng has rubbished calls for international bodies, the United Nations, African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), to take over the conduct of Ghana’s general elections in 2012.

The group, Generational Youth Movement (GYM), in a statement yesterday, petitioned the international bodies to “take steps to actively get involved in the organization and supervision of the processes leading up to the 2012 General Elections and the events directly related to the elections after polling”.
The group mentioned the ongoing District Assembly elections, which according to the statement has been organised abysmally as reason for the call. It also pointed accusing fingers at government for being behind the abysmal conduct of the District Assembly Election, hence its call for independent bodies to take over Ghana’s general elections.

However, Mr Agyenim Boateng, in an interview on Xfm’s Big Bite show today, discounted the claims and chided members of the group for their being daft in Ghana’s electoral processes.
“They (members of the Ghana Youth Movement) have a lot of learning to do. I cannot imagine what will inform their issuance of a statement calling on the international bodies to run elections in Ghana”, he says.
According to Mr Agyenim Boateng, the Ghana Electoral Commission has been constitutionally mandated to run elections in the country, and that no body from within or outside can take that mandate to conduct elections in Ghana, describing the group’s call as being neither here nor there; one that is “completely without foundation”.
Mr Agyenim Boateng also brushed aside the group’s allegations that the government is squarely to be blamed for the abysmal conduct of the elections. He says “the problem the EC faced had nothing to do with the government”.
These assertions were corroborated by the Public Affairs Director of the EC, Christian Owusu Parry.
Speaking on the same show, Mr Owusu Parry noted the huge difference between the two elections; the District Assembly and the general elections, and stressed that it would be unfair for anyone to compare the two.
“Anybody who compares the district assembly elections and the general election is making a wrong comparison. The two elections are entirely different, both in terms of the set of ballot papers that we are to print and the structures on the ground.”
“If you look at the district assembly elections, we have to print as many as 12,000 ballot papers and the number of candidates involved in the whole process makes it a bit cumbersome. So that is the most difficult elections to run”.
“When you come to the general elections, we have only 231 ballot papers to print. So we do that within a short period of time”.
He therefore corrected the impression that the challenges faced in the conduct of the district assembly elections will manifest again in the general election in 2012, saying, “they will in no way influence the 2012 elections.”

Story by Abena Asiedua Tenkorang/Xfm 95.1/Accra/Ghana