EC must come clean on STL — NPP
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) is demanding from the Electoral Commission (EC) a full disclosure of its scope of contractual relationship with technology vendor, Superlock Technologies Ltd (STL).
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In the view of the NPP, there is the need for clarity on the relationship in order to ensure transparency in the forthcoming general election.
Contradictory statements
A statement issued by the party signed by its Acting General Secretary, John Boadu, said the call had been necessitated by two contradictory statements stating the relationship between the two bodies.
According to the party, while the EC itself has been categorical in denying that STL has anything to do with the transmission of election results, the Minister of Interior, Prosper Bani, on the other hand, had on Tuesday, March 29, 2016 issued a statement claiming STL was contracted by the EC to transmit tallied election results.
The NPP said the current contractual arrangement between the EC and STL should be laid bare so the country did not enter into another election with a cloud of suspicion on the role being played by vendors in the electoral process.
STL’s contractual scope
“The information we collected from several sources is that STL’s contractual scope covers the cleaning, assembling of the voter registration kits; the maintenance of the hardware and software of the EC Data Centre; and the provision of communications lines for the EC.
What does this all mean? The EC owes it to the general public to explain whether the above defines the entire scope of its current contract with STL and if so, what that entails and if not what else has STL been contracted to do?”
Why this is news
According to the statement “Why this is news is that a similar confusion ensued on December 8, 2012, when party representatives visiting the Dzorwulu office of STL for verification on an alleged role of STL in results transmission were walked through the role STL was playing, which they said was providing only backup communication (Radio/Satellite) lines to support facsimile transmission of results and yet the EC quickly came out with a categorical denial that any such contractual engagement existed.”
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The statement said “We do not want the country to enter into another election with a cloud of suspicion on the role being played by vendors in the electoral process.”
According to the NPP, the information it collected from several sources is that STL’s contractual scope covers the cleaning, assembling of the voters registration kits; the maintenance of the hardware and software of the EC Data Centre, and the provision of communications lines for the EC. What does this all mean? The EC owes it to the general public to explain whether the above defines the entire scope of its current contract with STL and if so, what that entails and if not, what else has STL been contracted to do?, the NPP statement asked.
It further said that the general public would also wish to know about the current status of bids for the proposal for electronic transmission of results for this year’s elections.
“We believe rather than issuing blanket denials, the EC would do the nation a lot of good by being completely transparent on this matter and any other matter that touches on the integrity of the electoral process”, it stated.