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Opinions of Sunday, 19 June 2016

Columnist: Badu, K

The ambivalent EC chair must avoid Dr Gyan’s catastrophic error

We should not lose sight of the fact that human beings are bound to make mistakes, but such errors may be corrected through reflection.

"reflection is the process of stepping back from an experience to ponder carefully and persistently, its meaning to the self through the development of inferences; learning is the creation of meaning from past or current events that serves as a guide for future behaviour"(Daudelin 1996, p. 39).

The preceding definition construes that reflection is integral to learning, when learning is explicated as making sense of past experience in order to affect and understand future experience.

In this regard, I will urge Mrs Osei and her team to step back and reflect on some of their decisions, in particular, their posturing in the implementation of the supreme court’s judgment on the deletion and the re-registering of those who registered with the NHIS card.

Apparently, the Electoral Commissioner, Mrs Charlotte Osei is a bona fide Ghanaian. So, I gather she is a true patriot, who prays for the prosperity of our beloved Ghana.

It is also true that the Electoral Commissioner, Mrs Osei is over eighteen years old and of sound mind as prescribed by the Constitution of Ghana.

Thus, Mrs Osei is free from any restrictions in exercising her democratic rights.

And it could also be true that Mrs osei has a soft spot for a particular political party.

So, it cannot be deemed as a mischief if one soliloquizes over her political leaning.

In any case, conventional wisdom would tell us that Mrs Osei would wish that particular political party to perform well in the elections.

If that is the case, could she then be seen as a referee who may exhibit sheer risible proclivity in the middle of a competitive match with a view to awarding dubious free kicks and penalties to her preferred team’ at the slightest opportunity?

It is worth remembering that referees are supposed to be neutral, but in many instances they tend to show overt bias towards a particular team.

In some cases spectators suspect foul play because of some referees lopsidedness in a competitive match.

It is also true that an Electoral Commissioner is a human being, and, therefore, such individual is not infallible, that is, she may be susceptible to favour one over the other.

It is against this background that some discerning Ghanaians rightly smell foul play in the Electoral Commissioner’s decision making in the forthcoming general elections.

A school of thought also frets the lady at the helm of the Electoral Commission, Mrs Osei, is fading away-she is not ‘seeing her backside from her elbow’.

That is, she is in a state of ambivalence, and therefore has ceased being conscientious and pragmatic leader many discerning Ghanaians used to adore, including President Mahama, who appointed her to oversee the affairs of the Commission.

As a matter of fact, discerning Ghanaians are fretting over the seemingly impishness being displayed by Mrs Osei and her cohorts.

All the same, my word of advice to Mrs Osei and her team is to step aside and ponder and refrain from the same unpardonable mistake Dr Afari-Gyan and his team committed in the 2012 general elections.

In retrospect, Dr Afari-Gyan and his team catastrophically excluded the media from the special voting, a policy which had until then ensured the effective monitoring of the elections by the media.

Back then, we were told that the media exclusion came about as a result of the adoption of CI 72 by the Parliament.

The CI72 was laid in Parliament on August 14, 2012 in accordance with Article 11 (7) of the Constitution. The Instrument matured after the mandatory 21 Parliamentary sitting days.

CI75 thus came into force and became law at the end of September 2012 and replaced the Public Elections Regulations, 1996 (CI 15).

Obviously, it was bang out of order for Dr Afari-Gyan and his team to assume that the role being played by the media in our democratic dispensation is of less significance.

For it is worth noting that in as much as the security agencies have the uppermost role to play in maintaining the national ambiance, the role the media play in our democratic dispensation is also relevant, particularly during election process.

So, you would expect those we have entrusted with such an important role to have known better. Nevertheless, they came up with such a diabolical decision to exclude the media from the special voting.

Back then, many reflective thinkers’ raised the red flag about the apocalypse of the exclusion of the media observation in the 2012 elections.

And as it was anticipated, the media could not carry out fully the core duties, for a lot of incidents went unnoticed. ‘Twenty seven zero’ comes to mind.

It is worth remembering that an election officer infamously put ‘twenty seven zero’ on a pink sheet to signify two hundred and twenty seven. How bizarre?

Apparently, the ‘twenty seven zero’ lampoon came about following the Electoral Commission’s infamous decision to appoint majority of unlettered individuals’ as electoral area overseers. It was a catastrophic decision by all standards.

Thus, it is of heightened importance that Mrs Osei and her team engage in a carefully considered reflection and change their unpopular stance to restore confidence in the electorates.

K. Badu, UK.