The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) is doubting the credibility of a report by the European Union (EU) Election Observation Mission (EOM) on Ghana’s 2020 general election.
The EU Observation Mission in its final report on last year’s presidential and parliamentary election concluded that the polls were efficiently organised, competitive, and that voters participated freely in large numbers, which successfully met international standards.
The report also provided recommendations and proposals for consideration by Ghanaians that would help improve future electoral processes and strengthen Ghana’s democracy.
However, NDC’s Deputy General Secretary, Peter Boamah Otokunor an interview with Joy News, argued that the EU EOM, failed to capture the true state of the election.
According to him, there were several irregularities and flaws identified in the EU report.
Mr Otokunor claimed the report was prepared without inputs from the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) and that the EU EOM went to Parliament on the blind side of all political parties to gather information on the polls.
The report, he contented, cannot be taken lightly because it is not a true representation of Ghana’s election process and yet it plays a crucial role in the international space and can make and unmake the reputation of Ghana.
“They failed to accurately report and discuss all the issues and all the steps…If you look at the procedure, they actually went through the back door even in Parliament and that is where they encountered several problems and they had to go back and forth three times before the instrument was properly laid. So that problem itself was something that was supposed to be reported by the EU”, Mr Otokunor stated.
He contended that the EU EOM did not put all the bits and pieces of the election process together before arriving at the conclusion that the polls were free, fair and transparent.
“We expected that the EU will report on some of these critical issues because you are doing comprehensive monitoring of the elections, so all the fallouts during the registration exercise; the stabbing of Silas Wulochamey in Banda, the shooting at Dormaa Central.
“These cannot be isolated, if this thing happened in any of the European Countries, it is a big deal, why is it an isolated situation in Ghana? Mr Atokunor stated in an interview with Joy News’ Evans Mensah, host of PM Express.
The NDC Deputy General Secretary said he found it incomprehensible that after studying the document over and over again, there is no aspect of the report that talks about security, since that is one of the many metrics one can use to measure how free or fair an election really is.
