The Attorney General, Mr. Godfred Yeboah Dame has said he is pleased to observe that over time, the Electoral Commission of Ghana has demonstrated a sound understanding of the sacred responsibility it bears to the people of Ghana to organize elections in a manner prescribed by the Constitution.
According to him, this clear understanding of its basic duty to hold credible elections was firmly established in 2020, when under the most trying conditions forced upon the world by COVID-19, the Electoral Commission of Ghana remained unshaken in its quest to give to the people of Ghana an opportunity to select their leadership.
Addressing the Ghana Bar Association Annual Conference at Ho, Mr. Godfred Yeboah Dame said the Electoral Commission indeed rose to the occasion and delivered an internationally affirmed free, fair, and perhaps, the most transparent elections in Ghana since the inception of the Fourth Republican Constitution.
He said “Such was the credibility of the election that the complaints of unfairness made in the Supreme Court by a losing candidate in the Presidential election, strangely bordering on allegations of “wrong aggregation of votes” and “vote padding,” even though proven to be untrue at the trial, collectively involved a meager 6,622 votes – an amount patently insignificant to materially affect the outcome of an election in which the winner won by well over 500,000 votes.”
The A-G said “It is important to note that the total number of registered voters in the last election was 17,027,941. The total number of valid votes cast (definitely less than the turnout) was over 13 million. Without belaboring the point, I allude to these figures to demonstrate that the appetite of the people of Ghana to freely choose their leaders in the generally acclaimed best way remained the same even in the teeth of COVID-19. I consider it fitting as the leader of the Bar, to call on lawyers to support the Electoral Commission as presently constituted, to persist in its quest to deliver for the nation a free, fair and credible election capable of measuring up to the test of international standards, and also for the Bar to resist the misguided and parochial efforts of certain characters to undermine our democracy through unwarranted attacks on the Electoral Commission.”
Source: Mybrytfmonline/Kofi Atakora
