By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

The reason given in an allegedly leaked labor negotiations memo authored by workers of the Electoral Commission (EC) for demanding a 50-percent raise in their salaries in the form of allowances smacks of naked bribery (See “EC Staff Demand 50% of Salary as Allowance, Free Fuel” Citifmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 9/14/16).

In a petition to the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC), the EC workers, in effect, claimed that since they are legally prohibited from actively participating in the unsavory and downright criminal culture of bribery and corruption that has come to characterize the country’s electoral seasons, they deserve to be generously compensated for the statutory limitations imposed on them professionally.

To the foregoing effect, the EC workers noted as follows: “There are certain public places open to all [workers?] that employees of the Commission cannot participate[,] since they may be wanting [or compromise the professional integrity of the EC’s staff?] The exercise of neutrality becomes more sensitive during and after the conduct of elections, since we are most of the time perceived wrongly by our actions in the course of our work.”

There are clearly several problems with the foregoing quote from the memo, not the least of which is the scandalous attempt by the EC employees to blackmail the government into facilely acceding to their patently irrational and unconstitutional demands, which also include the provision of 30 gallons of fuel monthly for an unspecified period of time.

What the unionized workers of the EC are implicitly saying is that if the government either fails or refuses to grant their demands, these workers would have no other recourse but to participate in the statutorily criminal culture of bribery and corruption in order to make ends meet, like all of the other members of the civil service.

This, in effect, means that the EC cannot guarantee Ghanaian citizens a free and fair election come December 7. Now, this is a serious issue that ought to be promptly taken up by Parliament, if hell and mayhem are not to reign in the wake of Election 2016. About the only fair demand in the alleged memo is the request for 30 gallons of fuel, apiece, for those EC workers engaged in official duties that require considerable vehicular movement.

But even on this latter score, such fuel grant must be strictly and amply demonstrated to be necessary.

Some of the EC staff, no doubt, may actually deserve far less of the amount of fuel demanded, while others may actually require more than the requested 30 gallons of fuel per month to effectively perform their official duties.

If the government is really serious in trimming blubber from its budget, then it had better establish critical standards and stringent measures for ensuring the same. I know fully well that National Democratic Congress’ machine operatives like Mr. Ametor Quarmyne are likely to vehemently disagree with me, on grounds that such fiscally disciplined policy measure may be inimical to the interests of a ruling government that is hell-bent on retaining power in a very tense election season.

But it is the surefire way to go, if the Mahama regime wants to be taken seriously as a government that is genuinely interested in fighting corruption and unnecessary wastage of tax-payer resources, as well as salvaging whatever may be left of its badly dented image and credibility.

Indeed, it is also quite likely that, like their counterparts in other sectors of the civil service, the EC workers are woefully underpaid, just as it is likely that a remarkable percentage of the workers making such demands may very well have long outlived their usefulness as the EC’s employees.

If, indeed, these workers need to be offered bribes shamelessly disguised as legitimate salary increments in order to creditably acquit themselves of jobs that were not foisted upon them, to begin with, but rather ones of which they voluntarily applied as primary sources of income, then the mindset of the proverbial average Ghanaian worker requires some retooling or surgical realignment, normalization, or whatever the proper medical terminology for this kind of emergency procedure may be.

This lurid attempt to hold Ghana’s fledgling, albeit indubitably robust, democratic culture to ransom ought to be the last thing expected of our EC employees. You are either a part of the problem or a salutary part of the solution to the onward march of Ghanaian democracy.