The One Ghana Movement has called on the Electoral Commission (EC) to apologize over its error-ridden 2020 presidential results.
It also wants the electoral management body to assure Ghanaians that there will never again be a situation where the EC will have to go back and correct election results after they have been declared.
The credibility of the results released by the electoral management body has been questioned by a section of the public following disparities in the presidential results.
It follows the revision of the total valid votes declared by the EC on December 9, 2020, where EC Chairperson, Jean Mensa announced wrong figures for the valid votes cast as well as the percentage of votes president-elect, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo had.
The Commission subsequently amended the error in different press statements and clarified that this “does not change the percentages stated for each candidate and the declaration made by the Chairperson.”
But in a statement signed by its Executive Secretary, Emily Nyuur, the OneGhana Movement insisted that “these errors, be they marginal, are unpardonable and only create doubts about the credibility of the results as declared. This dangerous but avoidable development by the Independent referee- the EC has the potential to throw the country into chaos.”
The pressure group thus called on the EC to “apologize and assure citizens that this will never be repeated.”
It also called on security agencies to begin an immediate and independent investigation into deaths and injuries suffered by some individuals during the just-ended parliamentary and presidential election.
The group also condemned the pockets of violence while childing the two main political parties – the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and New Patriotic Party (NPP) for failing to ensure that the polls were incident-free.
It further chastised the NPP and NDC for claiming to be victorious in the polls ahead of the official declaration by the Electoral Commission (EC).
OneGhana Movement also asked the Inspector General of Police (IGP) to regularly update citizens on actions taken over similar infractions recorded during the voter registration exercise.
Errors in EC’s election results embarrassing but not compromising – Dr. Kojo Asante
Meanwhile, the errors in the EC’s communication of the 2020 General Election results though embarrassing do not affect the integrity of the results.
That is the view of Dr. Kojo Asante, the Director of Policy and Advocacy at Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana).
Dr. Kojo Asante explained why the anomaly would not affect the integrity of the results.
“If you take total votes cast which include rejected ballots, you will get a higher figure. And the total rejected ballot was about 2.2% we estimated. So I am sure the person calculating it used the total valid votes. So once you adjust it with the data, it doesn’t really affect who won for example. So those conclusions by the EC do not change with that and you can explain why that happened. If it had to do with the actual placement of the total valid votes then, you will have to raise a concern…So, it is embarrassing for the EC but in terms of the integrity of the declaration of the election, I for once is not saying we should have challenges with the EC’s declaration”, he explained.
CODEO has also said its independently-collated results of the presidential and parliamentary election are consistent with that of the EC.
“Given that the official result announced by the Electoral Commission for each candidate falls within their respective PVT estimated confidence ranges, CODEO can confidently confirm that its PVT estimates are consistent with the official presidential election results,” CODEO said.
