Kwesi Jonah, Senior Research Fellow, IDEG
The Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG) is calling on the Electoral Commission (EC) to increase the transparency of the electoral process in Ghana by publishing the results of all polling stations on its website before announcing the final results of the upcoming 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections.
According to Kwesi Jonah, a senior research fellow at IDEG, by implementing these measures, the Commission will strengthen its democratic process.
Although Ghana’s democracy is one of the sixth most stable in the world, Kwesi Jonah is convinced that the introduction of such transparency measures will further consolidate the country’s democratic achievements.
“We know that there are certain weaknesses, certain failings in our democracy, and some of these weaknesses are related to the electoral process,” he is quoted as saying in a report by myjoyonline.com.
He further noted: “The European Union, which has regularly observed elections in Ghana since 2012, has always made certain recommendations to help us with reforms so that we can accelerate the building of our democracy and not reverse it.
“One of them concerns the official publication of election results on the election commission’s websites,” he said.
He explained that introducing such measures would prevent some political parties from claiming that the results were rigged.
“No serious political party can claim that we do not have the results from one polling station after another, because our electoral system provides that there are two representatives of the political party in each polling station: one for the presidential candidate and one for the parliamentary candidate,” he said.
JKB/ADG
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