Accepting EC's committee appointment was 'unwise decision' - NDC tells Mark Arhin
The decision by Dr Karl Mark Arhin to accept to be part of the 18-member steering committee of the Electoral Commission knowing he was a member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has been described as an “unwise decision” by the Deputy General Secretary of the NDC, Mr George Lawson.
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According to Mr Lawson, the NDC as a party was not informed that Dr Arhin had been appointed and he had gone ahead to accept the position.
Dr Arhin was recently appointed to the steering committee of the EC as a representative of the National Service Scheme (NSS).
Following information that he was a card-bearing member of the NDC, it was announced on Wednesday that he had been dropped from the election committee and the NSS was to appoint a replacement in the light of the feedback on his partisan status.
Speaking on the matter in a radio interview on Asempa FM’s Ekosii Sen programme, Mr Lawson said if the party was aware, it would have counseled Dr Arhin against accepting the appointment.
It was “very, very wrong for him to take up that position… to me it was an unwise decision” and that the “wise decision” would have been for him to “decline” the appointment.
“And today look at how they are beating us, left, right, front, centre, whatever,” he noted.
Mr Lawson said he thought the EC was probably not aware that Dr Arhin was a member of the NDC and described the development as a wrong move which must be condemned.
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He said the EC has provided a time table to all political parties and there was no indication of an inauguration of a steering committee on the timetable.
The Campaign Manager of the NPP, Mr Peter Mac Manu, who also spoke on the Asempa FM programme said the steering committee was “bogus.’’
“These are things that cast the integrity of the Commission in dispute. They appoint Dr. Arhin in the first place only for him to step down. What is the meaning of that?” Mr Manu said
He said the whole steering committee thing had been done at the blind side of everybody and that even though he had been part of all Inter Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meetings, the issue has never been tabled until the inauguration of the committee.
Dr Arhin who is a Deputy Executive Secretary at the NSS, until recently, was said to be a former Deputy Director of International Affairs of the NDC. He was also a Deputy Elections Director of the NDC and an aspiring 2016 parliamentary candidate of the party at the Amenfi Central constituency.
There has been arguments why he decided to accept the appointment at all knowing his partisan status.
Pressure group Let My Vote Count Alliance (LMVCA) had on Tuesday called on the EC to dissolve the steering committee, which it said was NDC-biased.
It contended that Dr Arhin's nomination was dangerous and questioned, "...how fair can this process be when the person nominated to facilitate this process is a leading member of the ruling party?"
Until Dr. Arhin stepped aside; members included the Deputy Executive Secretary of the National Service Scheme (NSS) in-charge of Finance and Administration, Dr Karl Mark Arhin; Deputy Director General of Joint Operations of the Ghana Armed Forces, Colonel F. Ogbe; Deputy Commissioner at the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Joseph Whittal and Deputy Chairman of the National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE) in-charge of Operations, Samuel Asare Akuamoah.
The rest are the Head of Planning, Budgeting, Monitoring and Evaluation Unit at the Ghana Education Service (GES); Executive Secretary of the National Peace Council, Francis Azumah; Executive Secretary of the National Media Commission (NMC), George Sarpong; Director General, Operations, the Ghana Police Service, COP Christian Tetteh Yohonu and the Director of Operations of the Ghana Prisons Service, Sylvester K.B. Rabbles.
The committee was inaugurated on February 8, 2016.