EC’S RECORD, GOOD TESTAMENT

CONCERNS over whether the 2008 elections will be free and fair have inundated our media landscape, with some opposition politicians, especially leading the cacophony of noises concerning the ability and preparedness of the body mandated by law to conduct elections in the country, the Electoral Commission (EC) to deliver its mandate.
It is against this rather ominous background that we find the assurance by the EC that its resolve to ensure clean and incident-free elections will not be impeded by financial constraints very heart-warming, indeed. We believe that every democratic-minded and peace-loving Ghanaian can heave a sigh of relief with this assurance.
The assurance by the EC comes in the wake of claims in certain quarters that the government is deliberately stifling the EC of financial resources to incapacitate it in its efforts to conduct free and fair elections this year.
More assuring is the pledge by the Deputy Executive Chairman of the EC in charge of Finance and Administration, Mr David Kanga, that the commission had not encountered any problems in accessing funds for the 2008 elections.
The DAILY GRAPHIC may not be alone in its belief that in spite of these firm and incontrovertible assurances, some individual cynics still doubt the ability of the EC to conduct free and fair elections, despite the fact that when it comes to elections in Ghana and elsewhere on the African continent, our EC has an impeccable track record.
Since the horrifying events in Kenya after the December 27, 2007, the doomsday prophets have not missed the least opportunity to remind us of terrible consequences if the December elections do not go their way.
To these doomsday prophets, we recall to their attention that if the 1992 elections could not bring us doom, then the 2008 elections could only be an improvement over previous elections. We say this because by every stretch of the imagination the 1992 elections were incident-free, what with the use of a bloated voters’ register, non-transparent ballot boxes, open intimidation by so-called organs of the revolution and a myriad other untoward practices before, during and after the presidential election of that year.
The worst that one of the four opposition parties which contested the election did was to document what it believed were the irregularities that occurred, culminating in the book, “The Stolen Verdict”.
It must be clear to every one of us that the EC, made up of responsible citizens of this country, is itself conscious of its reputation and so it will not do anything to create doubts in the minds of the electorate that it will rig the 2008 elections in favour of any one party.
The Executive Commissioner of the commission through the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC), has managed to resolve thorny issues such as the electoral roll, transparent ballot boxes, photo ID cards, ballot papers, as well as polling agents. Whenever any disagreements have come up over these issues, the EC has used dialogue to reach consensus, without compromising its mandate as a truly independent body charged with the conduct of elections in Ghana.
Since the EC has demonstrated enough capacity to fulfil this mandate without fear or favour, the DAILY GRAPHIC feels the best all of us can do is support it to do that in December 2008 to maintain Ghana as a peaceful and united entity.
We also remind the government to fulfil its obligation to the commission by providing it with all the funds and logistics it needs to conduct another credible elections. There may be financial constraints but elections are a sine qua non for nurturing true democracy so we must all find the wherewithal to make them clean and acceptable to all.