Dumor: EC has a “credibility problem”

Ghana 's independent Electoral Commission, EC, has a “credibility problem,” former Executive Secretary of the National Identification Authority, NIA, Prof Ernest Dumor has told Robert Nii Arday Clegg on Starr FM’s Morning Starr Tuesday.

“First of all, with due respect, we have a credibility problem, as far as the Electoral Commission is concerned, so, we have to find a strategy to win back that confidence, that trust that the EC had when we started in 1993 as a Commission, namely: Making sure that all stakeholders know exactly what the EC is doing in order to deliver on its service, and to deliver efficiently and effectively to the satisfaction of all stakeholders,” he said.

Ghana’s biggest opposition New Patriotic Party, NPP, has made similar pronouncements about the lack of confidence in the EC.

Last month, for example, the Party’s Flagbearer, Nana Akufo-Addo, while in The United States said, during separate meetings in Washington DC with think tanks Centre for Global Development and the National Endowment for Democracy, that the most effective means by which the EC can win the confidence of Ghanaians is by compiling a new electoral roll.

According to the three-time flagbearer, Ghanaians are no longer interested in resorting to the courts to settle electoral disputes, but, rather, prefer a reformation of the country’s electoral process.

Quoting from the CDD’s Afrobarometer report in 2014, which said that public trust in the EC dipped to 42% in 2014, from 80% just before the 2012 elections, the former Attorney General said it was imperative for the EC to restore the confidence of the citizens in the institution by having a new roll.

To firm up his argument, Mr Akufo-Addo also read from the report by the UNDP on Ghana’s Electoral Commission (“Conduct of an Institutional Assessment and the Development a Strategic Plan for the Electoral Commission of Ghana”), issued 2 months ago (16 August 2015), which stressed that: “the EC used to be the most trusted institution in the country; but not anymore.”

The UNDP report, according to Mr Akufo-Addo, concludes by categorically stating that “substantial amount has been invested on the biometric registration and verification; however, there is still no reliable voter register.”