Civil Society group, the Alliance for Social Equity & Public Accountability (ASEPA) has petitioned Parliament to open an inquiry into the 2020 general elections over anomalies bordering on rigging and deliberate manipulation of results.
In the petition signed by its Executive Director, Mensah Thompson, the CSO says both the Parliamentary and presidential elections were fraught with serious anomalies that have since weakened the country’s democracy.
And that, the Electoral Commission which delivered the controversial election has also not accounted for its stewardship.
“The elections right from the preparations to declaration recorded a number of fundamental breaches, violations and discrepancies which eventually led to the 2021 election petition hearing at the Supreme Court,” ASEPA stated in the petition.
“Even though the Supreme Court gave its ruling on the landmark case affirming the final declaration of the Electoral Commission, the Commission failed to fulfil its primary responsibility of accountability to the people of Ghana at the instance of the Supreme Court.”
The petition said the Supreme Court which upheld the final results under very controversial circumstances cannot be said to have erred in law because it is not the Judiciary’s business to undertake oversight on elections.
Consequently, it said, the Supreme Court’s decision not to allow the EC Chairperson, Jean Mensa to testify in the election petition was not wrong, as the onus lies on Parliament to ensure accountability.
Among other things, ASEPA pointed out that “the Electoral Commission made six different amendments to its official declaration of the 2020 General Elections within 12 hours after its hasty declaration on December 9, 2020.”
It also added that the poor execution of the election had led to the killing of eight Ghanaians and the wounding of several others.
Again, the CSO pointed out the EC had violated ECOWAS protocols on elections by compiling a voters’ register in less than six months for the election and spending Ghc800million to do so without properly accounting for the money.