Election 2012 And The SC Verdict

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Created on Saturday, 12 October 2013 00:00

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Election 2012 And The SC Verdict

The general elections of December 2012 were enacted like a play with various scenes and it ended as a tragi-comedy.

ACT 1 Scene 1.

Appears Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan: Fellow countrymen, women and children of 18 years and above, as you very well know, this year is an election year and as usual, my outfit is poised to begin a process towards the elections. We will begin by registering eligible Ghanaians and possibly aliens who say they are Ghanaians. By the Powers conferred on me by the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, I will do the registration as we have been doing all these years.

The People: No no no, we want biometric registration so that people will not register double. We want to prevent a situation where Ketu East can record 98,000 when the population of both Ketu East and West is 62,000. Yes, we should also prevent Manhyia votes meeting Subin votes since Manhyia ‘oman a enhyia’. If Manhyia meets Subin, wow, it is Florida.

Afari-Gyan: Bio- what? You think elections are like studying Biology where you can bring in bio-degradable pink sheets and something something? My grandmother in Tuabodom via Jinijini in B before A, where ‘congless’ is celebrated on an untarred road, may understand the ‘bio’, but the ‘metric’. She weighs her cocoa beans according to ‘plane’ and not ‘metric’. It will be over my ailing but yet to die body that ‘bio’ or ‘metric’ or both will be used for elections in this country because since Adam and Eve, all elections for my forefathers and hind mothers were done without ‘bio’ and its twin brother of ‘metric’. Who born dog?

Some people: Year, Kwadwo, we agree with you. In my village called Suro Onipa in the Tein Constituency, about half of the people there cannot read or write. The only literate person lives in Onipa Ye Bad, two kilometres from Suro Onipa. How can anybody there use biometric machines for elections there? They may even fear that in this era of cancer everywhere, they can even develop cancer if they put their fingers on any bio with a metric attached to it. No way, shouted Field Marshall Cockroach of the National Demonic Congregation, his antennae rising to the sky heavens.

Unfortunately for Dr. Afari-Gyan, he did not have his way. Reasonable people who believe in genuine free and fair elections prevailed and prayed and put pressure on the government to release funds for a biometric registration and voting as well. So lackadaisical was Afari-Gyan and his Electoral Commission in its approach towards the use of the Biometric Verification Device (BDV) that the time for the registration was so close to the election time proper.

ACT 1 SCENE 2

For the first time, registration of voters for general elections in this country was organized in tots. That is to say that it was not done in full throughout the country at the same time. It was not surprising though because ever since the National Demonic Congregation took power in 2009, everything worth doing in this country has been done in tots. District Assembly elections were done in tots, supply of liquefied petroleum gas had been in tots for a long time, electricity supply had been in tots for so long a time and therefore when the biometric registration began in tots, it was certified bad governance as usual. Polling Stations were grouped in 10s and the registration done in turns. By the end of the exercise, minors had registered, double, triple and quadruple registration had taken place in many places. It just told us what was in store for this country.

ACT 2 SCENE 1

Dr. Afari-Gyan and his Commission are empowered by Article 45 of the Constitution to among others;

a. compile the register of voters and revise it at such periods as may be determined by law.

Dr. Afari-Gyan, about three months to elections decided to increase the number of constituencies by 45. His understanding of ‘revise’ was and still remains ‘to add’. That is when the errors in the elections began. The Bill on the creation of the new constituencies to Parliament for approval into law was full of ‘errotic’ errors of gargantuan nature. Parliament was sharply divided on whether to allow the errors, be they clerical, administrative, grammatical or political to stay for the Bill to be approved or not. It was eventually withdrawn.

As if the lenses of Afari-Gyan had deserted him, the corrected Bill came with its own classical errors which Parliament allowed to go. So in less than three months to General Elections, 45 new constituencies had been created in spite of protestations from the opposition parties and pleas from civil society organizations and religious bodies. The arrogance of Afari-Gyan prevailed.

ACT 3 SCENE 1

The then Minister for Education, Mr. Lee Ocran came onto the scene and played a very simple, short but crucial role in the election. He vetoed that Teachers were not going to leave the classrooms to engage in the work of the Electoral Commission. It is a historical fact that teachers, ever since elections through the ballot box began in this country, have been at the forefront of the work of the Electoral Commission. They have a world of experience in election processes. Lee Ocran prevented them from doing what they do each election year. The result was that the EC recruited people from NADMO, NYEP and foot soldiers of the NDC to execute the grand agenda. Hence, the 27 0 written as Twenty-Seven 0.

ACT 3 SCENE 2

Afari-Gyan printed about thrice the number of collation forms (pink sheets) all bearing the pictures of the eight Presidential Candidates even though he claims he was expecting many more Presidential Candidates to file when the pictures had already been embossed on the forms. So if Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings had succeeded in registering, she might have taken one of the already printed candidates’ pictures as hers for the elections.

ACT 4 SCENE 1

The elections took place alright, freely and fairly in the public view. But what stopped anybody who had some copies of the excess collation forms (Pink Sheets) to fill in a Polling Station, its code and number and write figures which were different from the figures announced at the polling station and get that transmitted to the EC office instead of the figures at the Polling Station? Hence the Finger of God, Juaso Town Hall Polling Stations irregularities and the rest. With all these properly enacted and executed fully, Afari-Gyan had the courage to say ‘GO TO COURT’. I understand that in the course of the trial, either something happened to Afari-Gyan or Afari-Gyan did something something. It is all over the place oooo.

Oooooh yes, one day, I remember the Justices came to sit down and in less than 15 minutes, they rose again and went into chambers. Was it when the alleged something something happened to Afari-Gyan or he did something something to himself? People are saying oooo, it is not me. Eeeei, how sweet the scent of a big man’s something in a Petitioners’Court. Wait I am not singing.

ACT 4 SCENE 2

Exeunt the Justices for two weeks

Enter the nine Justices on the D day

And the court said that when the Constitution says that a Presiding Officer should sign and he or she disobeys the Constitution, the Constitutional interpretation of it is that ‘Go wey you’ it does not matter. And that it is an error which is beyond the voters’ control and is caused solely by the Presiding Officer, according to Adinyira JSC, and that all the agents of the candidates signed.

It also came to pass that when there are more ballots in the ballot box after close of polls, it is ‘mere ballot stuffing’ and that they should defy the principle of universal adult suffrage and count to determine a President, according to Atubuga JSC. For the information of the Justices, it is only the Presiding Officer who can be identified easily during and after an election. The signatures of candidates can be faked by anybody who has access to a blank Pink Sheet and decides to fill in different figures. Any name can be written and signed and ascribed to a candidate’s agent, but it will be difficult to identify such an agent subsequently as happened at Juaso Town Hall and the Finger of God Polling Stations. The Last election was fraught with errors, which elected a President and the Supreme Court has stamped the errors as valid. It was a tragi-comedy.

What else can I say but to take three shots of mahogany bitters and watch.

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Date: 13 September 2013

Source: Kwesi Biney