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The Chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC), Mrs. Jean Mensa, has been cautioned by the General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia, not to treat the Commission as her personal property, just as how she ran the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).

According to him, “Jean Mensa is acting as if she does not know the difference between IEA which is her personal property and the Electoral Commission which belongs to the State. It appears she has not seen the difference yet.”

The NDC Chief Scribe’s comment comes on the back of the statement issued by the EC in reaction to a Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) report that the recently-organised Ayawaso West Wuogon Constituency by-election cannot be described as successful or fair because of several infractions which marred the beauty of the contest.

CODEO, a few hours after the by-election results were declared, stated in a press release that the presence of armed security officials intimidated voters at the various polling stations.

According to CODEO, some polling stations had separate security teams from the Police, the Immigration Service and National Security.

Apart from that, some polling stations also had mobile patrol teams of security personnel “sometimes at short intervals of less than thirty minutes. Even more worrying was the presence of masked security operatives at polling stations, who could not easily be identified and thus could not be held accountable for any misconduct.”

“At the Prisons JHS at Roman Ridge, for instance, security operatives who claimed to be National Security operatives positioned themselves next to polling officials and when a stationed uniformed police officer alerted them to move away from poll officials, a pick-up full of many more of the so-called security operatives descended on the police officer and attacked him for doing legitimate work,” they added.

In response, the EC pointed out that while it recognizes the important role of the local election observers in ensuring fairness and accountability in the electoral process, it would have expected CODEO to have given the overall picture of the conduct of the poll i.e. the credibility of the voters register, the voting process, the conduct of the election officials as well as counting and declaration of results etc.

"As a Commission our focus and mandate is to conduct credible, transparent and fair elections that uphold the will of the people as witnessed in all the 137 polling stations in the constituency," a portion of the EC's response statement read.

Commenting on the issue, Asiedu Nketia, who was speaking in an interview on Okay FM’s Ade Akye Abia Morning Show, described the EC's response statement as disappointing and also depicted that of someone who is not abreast with the electoral process.

"....the EC boss should be humble enough to admit her ignorance about the electoral process and take lessons from people like the CODEO Executive Director who has more than 10 years experience as Director of Elections at EC in Ghana.

“....He is knowledgeable in election matters and so Jean Mensa should have known that and not insult him as a liar”, he averred.