Pressure is mounting on the head of the Electoral Commission to resign over what critics say is the needless humiliation the EC has suffered in court under Mrs Charlotte Osei.
Hours after the former Attorney General Martin Amidu began a crusade for the resignation of Mrs Osei, a senior law lecturer with the University of Ghana told Joy News demands for her resignation are justified.
Dr Opoku Adusei is convinced Mrs Osei is leading her team of commissioners “astray” and any call for her resignation is not only acceptable but justified.
The Electoral Commission has suffered a number of defeats in court barely a year after the EC boss was appointed into office.
Notable amongst the defeats are the voter’s register case involving the NHIS card registrants, the release of collation sheets to political parties, as well as the recent defeat suffered in the Nduom disqualification case.
Critics say the EC may suffer several other humiliations in court from other disqualified persons if it does not take steps to reconcile with the flagbearers and allow them to correct the mistakes they made on their forms.
Amidu’s Outburst
Former Attorney General Martin Amidu is one of the critics of the EC boss who, in a no holds barred opinion piece, punched the EC boss, describing her as “incompetent and arrogant.”
“As a matter of fact, her arbitrary and unlawful disqualification of 13 aspiring presidential candidates and her arrogant attitude towards those distinguished citizens and their political parties or supporters do not conduce to her image as an impartial arbiter of elections. And the decision in ex-parte Papa Kwesi Nduom exposes her high handiness, incompetence, and inexperience as a public officer. It also does no credit to whatever agenda the appointing authority which is also contesting this presidential election had in mind in patronising her to the important and critical office of impartiality as Electoral Commissioner under the Constitution.”
“It is amazing that the commissioner failed or refused to realize that her impunity in not complying with the Constitution and the law in disqualifying the aspiring candidates disclosed more about her failure as the head of the Electoral Commission than the ignorance or lack of attention on the part of the aspirants in filling the complex nomination forms designed by her office for the presidential elections,” he said.
He was blunt in his call for her to resign.
Reacting to that call, a law lecturer with the University of Ghana, Dr Opoku Osei, said it is a germane call to have Mrs Charlotte Osei resign.
He said for a commissioner to misread that important aspect of the law, disqualify these aspirants, only to be told, at least in Nduom’s case, that she should allow the aspirant to correct whatever anomaly he has on his forms is not good enough for the EC.
He said if the EC was minded, it would have taken steps to meet with the disqualified aspirants shortly after the Nduom case, in a conciliatory attempt to resolve the impasse but the lawyers are still contesting the matter in court.
He said for the EC boss to lead an institution into legal suits and lose “nine” of them in a spate of one year is not good enough a report about the EC boss.
“If she is leading them [commissioners] astray,” then the grounds for the call of her removal are credible, he added.
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