Afari-Gyan: Ivorian experience won’t happen here

The Chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC) Dr. Kwadwo Afar-Gyan, has assured Ghanaians that what happened in Cote d’Iviore where fugitive, General Robert Guei, dissolved the Electoral Commission, arrested its chairman and declared himself winner of the presidential election, cannot happen in Ghana.

He said our electoral system is such that it would be impossible for one to change the final result. Any attempt at fiddling with the figures would be glaring, therefore should he, Afari-Gyan, be arrested as happened in the Cote d’Iviore, the final result will still stand. He therefore called on Ghanaians to have confidence in his commission.

Giving reasons to back his claim, Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, who was speaking in a radio interview in Takoradi, said to ensure free and fair elections his outfit has handed over a copy of the voter’s register to each of the political parties contesting the elections who are also supposed to have representatives at all the polling stations.

With this encouragement coupled with the fact that at the end of the voting period, the ballot papers are supposed to be counted and the results declared at the polling station. Any serious political party should be able to know the number of voters it got by midnight after collating the results from all the polling stations in the country.

He said in case the Electoral Commission is dissolved or he, Afari-Gyan, is arrested, the political parties would have by then known among themselves the one who has actually won the election. “That is why I said if you attempt to change the results, you will glaringly be caught.”

According to the chairman of the EC, the mechanism he has put in place in Ghana makes it easier for the parties to tabulate the results and compare it with the official one, but that was not the case in Cote d’Ivoire.

“Even the head of the Electoral Commission still stood his grounds at the peril of his life and insisted on the one who actually won the election, he added.

Kwadwo Afari-Gyan further said the EC has already given the voter’s register to each of the political parties, because they wanted them to compile their own results, but warned that they (parties) have no legal right to go on air and declare the results they have compiled because that one is a statutory duty of the commission.

Dr. Afari-Gyan said he was not worried about the barrage of criticism directed at the EC because no matter what a human being does people may still find fault with it. He was confident that the electoral system he has put in place in Ghana is one of the best in the world.

“A lot of people from other countries like Yemen, Nigeria and Uganda have been coming here to study our electoral process”.