'Election ministers' Jean Mensa, Bossman Asare doing Akufo-Addo’s 'bidding' – Otokunor

The main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has discredited Ghana's Electoral Commission saying it cannot disagree with critics who describe the Chair of the election management body, Mrs Jean Mensa and her deputy, Dr Bossman Asare, as “Ministers of Elections” for President Nana Akufo-Addo.

The NDC, which finds as wasteful a decision by the EC to procure an entirely new voter roll eleven months into the December general elections, indicated that it will explore every legitimate means to protect the integrity of the exercise, adding that the rank and file of the party would be vigilant to prevent the subversion of the will of the people.

At a press conference on Tuesday to make a case for a new Biometric Voter Management System as well as a new voter roll, the EC’s Deputy Chairman in-charge of Operations, Mr Samuel Tettey said the periodic replacement of the register is down to much-needed reforms to improve the credibility and integrity of the register, hence, the intention to add facial recognition features to the process to completely eliminate the manual verification process so as to ensure credibility and integrity of elections.

But speaking to Class News’ Blessed Sogah, the Deputy General Secretary of the NDC, Mr Peter Boamah Otokunor said there is no justification for the creation of an entirely new voter roll when efforts can be made to improve the current one.

Touching on what should be done, the Deputy General Secretary said: “Certainly, if there’s a serious police service, an institution that is independent, that is functional, that is effective, you needn’t even call for investigations. And there again, you will go back and look at 2016 when the system of the Electoral Commission was compromised and up till today, everybody knows that it was compromised.

“The EC Commissioner came out and said the system has been compromised. President Akufo-Addo won the elections. Ask whether he has asked any of the security agencies to do further investigations about the compromise of the Electoral Commission transmission system”.

Mr Otokunor added: “They have got Charlotte Osei removed, she didn’t complete her investigations. A new Commissioner came, they are not even concerned about the investigations we have made. The call over and over again for investigations to be conducted into that incident, the current EC is not bothered. And their actions, their inactions, the way they act, the way they relate with political parties suggest that they are in to do the bidding of the government and it makes it very difficult to disagree when people say that Jean Mensa and the Bossman team were brought in as Ministers of Elections for President Akufo-Addo because all they have done in the past three years is to pursue the political interest of President Akufo-Addo”.