It is becoming crystal clear that Mrs. Charlotte Osei, the Nigerian-born Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, is hell bent on plunging this country into anarchy. The Chronicle does not need the services of a ghost to pontificate on the destruct button under her thumb.
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It was Mrs. Osei and her commission who decided to rein in the Supreme Court to adjudicate on an Accra High Court’s earlier pronouncement that the commission erred in failing to give Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom, presidential candidate of the Progressive People’s Party, the opportunity to correct whatever errors that had been detected on his nomination forms, to enable him contest the 2016 presidential election.
It was a straight forward order that made sense to any reasonable human being. Not Mrs. Osei and her commission. She proceeded to the Supreme Court to get the order quashed. But the seven-member panel of this nation’s highest court ordered the EC to allow all the 13 aspirants disqualified as a result of errors on their nomination papers, to be allowed to correct them, to enable their names to appear on the ballot paper for the people of Ghana to decide who is fit to lead this nation.
Instead of complying with the Supreme Court directive, Mrs. Osei and her commission are playing games with the verdict. On the day, when Mrs. Osei got the bloody nose from the Supreme Court, the head of Communications of the Electoral Commission, Mr. Eric Dzakpasu, a man whose role in the election jigsaw could be likened to Napoleon’s Squealer in Animal Farm, announced to a bewildered nation that the errors in Dr. Nduom’s nomination papers had jumped from two to 105.
What is of note here is that the EC’s own appearance at the Supreme Court was based on two errors. As it is, it looks like the EC is fishing for errors outside what was pronounced by the Supreme Court in order to disqualify Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom.
Yesterday, the National Democratic Congress issued a press statement chronicling what amounts to an orchestrated scheme to get Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings out of the race. According to an official statement from the NDC, after being kept waiting for five hours at the offices of the commission yesterday, bewildered officials of the party were told by EC officials that they now have 33 errors to contend with, and not the original three.
The People’s National Convention had a story of its own. According to an official of the party, PNC officers were told yesterday that they have as many as 303 errors to correct before the day ran out. There are many other stories of what victims believe were deliberate frustrations by the commission and its officials. Surely these are worrying times.
Yesterday, Very Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Kwaku Asante, Chairman of the Peace Council, rushed to the Adabraka offices of the commission to try and broker some peace. He is asking the commission to desist from behaviours that would be construed as deliberate attempts to get some persons off the ballot paper.
Read the lips of the Chairperson of the National Peace Council. “I believe that the ruling of the Supreme Court should bring finality, especially, in respect of the presidential candidates who were disqualified, because they have been given the opportunity to re-submit.”
Very Rev. Prof. Asante has an advice or two for the commission to ensure that sanity prevailed before, during and after the elections. “My advice, first of all, to the Electoral Commission, is simple. They have the responsibility to ensure that the ground is level.”
Unfortunately, the ground has never been level, ever since Mrs. Charlotte Osei, the Nigerian-born legal luminary, was appointed to head the commission. Why a Nigerian should be appointed to the chair of the Electoral Commission, when the Constitution of the land is clear that only bona fide Ghanaians shall be appointed members of the commission, gives the game away, in our view.
From the way the nomination wahala is panning out, Mrs. Osei is on a mission to please Mr. John Dramani Mahama and the appointing authorities in the NDC. The Chronicle believes she is prepared to do everything and anything to do so. We have to force the Nigerian-born Mrs. Charlotte Osei out of the commission, if Ghanaians want sanctity in the vote.
The Chronicle has no qualms about the consequences of the recalcitrant attitude of Mrs. Osei. We believe she is up to no good. We should not entertain her to inflame passions in the run-up to the polls.
We are courting disaster, we dar
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