Jean Mensa vs Coalition: Who wins?

As I wrote last week, I am not against a replacement of the register; if it is not changed today, it would eventually have to be changed, anyway, after the December elections.

But I have a question for the Electoral Commission (EC).

Did the commission have all the relevant information about dysfunctional equipment, etc. before June 12, 2019, when it held a press conference to announce the date for the Limited Voters’ Registration? The exercise itself was held from June 17, 2019 through Sunday, July 7, 2019.

Nationalistic duty

Some 1.2 million Ghanaians braved the extra-sweltering sunshine to register. Many were the fishermen and farmers who, out of sheer nationalistic duty, skipped going out to sea or the farm.

Today, only five months later, all of that is gone to waste because the EC has changed its mind. Whatever the cost of the limited registration exercise, the loser is Ghana’s already reeling economy.

When I think of the effect, a number of citizens come to mind as the disadvantaged – the uneducated market woman, the half-literate tro-tro driver and his aplankey, the scantily remunerated messenger and secretary in the civil service, the underground miner and the cocoa farmer, whose sweat exchanges for those dollars at the Bank of Ghana (BoG).

It is important that the EC, like the Judiciary, must be independent.

Without that the resultant chaos cannot be contained.

With our knowledge of what electoral violence has done to some countries, with pictures of limb-less citizens of Sierra Leone and Liberia haunting everybody, it is not difficult convincing Ghanaians to keep the EC financially independent.

But independence at what cost? Over the years, the EC has become so independent and so powerful that Mrs Charlotte Osei in April 26, 2016, had the temerity to call a press conference to insist on a new logo.

“This is our new logo. We like it. We picked it. It makes us happy.” Period! All 25 million Ghanaians could scream, howl, cry, wail or kick our head against a stone wall.

The EC had said it, and that was it. How much did it cost? None of your business! Is that what independence means?
Post-2016 elections.

Exit Charlotte Osei, enter Jean Mensa. On Tuesday, December 4, 2018, the new EC boss announces:

“The original logo of Ghana’s Electoral Commission (EC), has been restored”. Cost: GH¢16,000.00, supposed to be pittance, but an amount for which somebody could kill or maim.

Thankfully and mercifully, however, we have, at long last, had an EC which seems to now admit that its independence is meaningless unless it jaw-jaws with the people; hence, the setting up of a body of eminent persons as an interface between the voiceless and the EC.

Power makes sense only when it is exercised with and on behalf of the people.

Yesterday, the Eminent Persons Committee was said to be preparing to go into session.

What will be the outcome? Can it persuade Jean Mensa & Co to change its position? What, then, would be the implication, since according to the commission, it has already begun the procurement process?

Should that be the case, will the coalition against a new register be prepared to yield a few metres of its territory?

In all my 60-plus years on earth, there has been only one occasion when no side in a tug of war could be declared a winner because no side was able to pull the other to cross the line.

This was at a women’s games event at Essikado Nana Nketsia IV Memorial School.

Will the two sides be willing to allow the tug-of-war to end without a winner? Could it not be interpreted to mean that both sides won? I am happy about the stand-off, however.

It means a lot for the future. It means a future in which the EC will consult more, and flex less.

My happiness is also about the lesson this whole thing about democracy has for us as a people.

For example, the EC asked Parliament to approve GH¢444,846,663.00 for the compilation of a new voters’ register. They’ve got it. That is not all the money it wants.

It has applied to Parliament for GH¢1,890,000,000 (GH¢1.9 billion) to conduct Election 2020. The last time I checked, GH¢1 billion was approved some months ago.

National priority

I asked last week, and I repeat it here. What is Ghana’s number one national priority? In the concluding statement in defending its decision about the new register, the EC said it was replacing the existing software with a new one “to enable us to own and control our systems”. What do we own?

It is not for lack of brains.

We’ve got brains in this country. Brains without funding.

Meanwhile, as each side stands behind the lines ready to tug, I plead that in the interest of peace, let Ghana win.