Jean Mensa – Chairperson of EC
A Deputy Director of the Electoral Commission (EC) in charge of operations has denied former President John Mahama’s allegation of hacking in the last elections.
Mr. Samuel Tettey, who was the Director of Elections
during the 2016 elections, said the former President got it all wrong regarding
the electronic transmission of results, which he said was not what was agreed
upon as Mr. Mahama implied.
The EC, he said, does not understand his
allegation because a report about the elections does not mention anything like hacking.
The law, he said, stated that the manual
transmission was to be the mode of transmitting results and not the electronic
medium, adding that “the electronic transmission was not to be used to declare
results.”
Talking about the last elections with an
unquestionable institutional memory of the EC where he has worked for many
years, Mr. Tettey said that staff of the election management body were not even
trained and primed for the handling of the electronic transmission of the
election results.
“The EC was not prepared for the electronic
transmission of results,” he added.
He also
highlighted some of the challenges the commission faced a few days to the
polls.
Speaking to DAILY GUIDE editors
during a visit to the newspaper house, he painted a disturbing picture of a commission,
whose house was not in order a few days ahead of the crucial elections.
“Two to three days to the election, we were
still purchasing equipment for the transmission,” he said.
‘Hacking?’ he asked rhetorically.
“I don’t know what he meant,” he said in
reference to the former President’s haranguing about a perceived hacking of the
election results.
“A consultant was brought from Zambia or so by
the EC to advise the institution about the electronic transmission of results,
but because of the inherent challenges being experienced during the trials the
man advised against it,” he said.
The then EC Chairperson, Charlotte Osei, was
insistent on using the electronic transmission for the transmission of results,
regardless of the consultant’s advice and what the parties had agreed.
He said the man abandoned the project and left
for his country because the EC wanted the electronic transmission at all costs,
but the consultant realized it was not going to work.
The refusal of Charlotte Osei to heed good
counsel about the unfeasibility of the electronic transmission mode and the eventual
frustration of the Zambian consultant and his departure from the country is another
example of the unilateralism with which she managed the EC.
It would appear that there was something about
the electronic transmission of results which inured to her interest and others,
hence her insistence on it, regardless of the general opposition to it.
Former President John Mahama, in a presentation
in Oxford, claimed the last elections were rigged in the favour of the New
Patriotic Party (NPP) presidential candidate, adding that the system was
hacked.
His claim of hacking of the system was in consonance with the former EC Chairperson because she also told Ghanaians during the restless moments of the wait for the declaration of the results that the system had been hacked and compromised.
By A.R. Gomda
The post Mahama Confused No Hacking Of 2016 Results appeared first on DailyGuide Network.
