The Chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC), Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, has discounted any immediate plans to shift the country’s electoral system from manual to electronic voting, since many Ghanaians are not conversant with the computer.

He did not give a time frame within which Ghana could be ready for e-voting but hinted, “We can conduct electronic voting only when we attain the required level of computer literacy.”

Dr Afari-Gyan was answering a question on the readiness of Ghana to go for e-voting after delivering a lecture on “Elections and Democracy” at the Great Hall of the University of Ghana, Legon.

The   40-minute  alumni  lecture  touched  on  the  importance of elections to a democracy, the concept of free and fair elections and the rights and responsibilities of the government, the EC, political parties, the Judiciary, candidates, the electorate, the media, civil society organisations and security personnel in achieving free and fair elections.

Dr Afari-Gyan said e-voting required voters to vote electronically on the computer. However, he said many Ghanaians, especially those in remote areas, did not have access to the computer, let alone know how to use it.

“Until we make the people comfortable with the use of the computer, we cannot go e-voting,” the EC Chairman stressed.
He, however, indicated that the commission would do e-registration to capture the details or background information of voters.

Dr Afari-Gyan said even developed countries such as Britain, Canada and Australia had not subscribed to e-voting and wondered why Nigeria and Kenya wanted to go e-voting.

He cited the increasing use of money by politicians to seek public office, the exaggerated importance of political parties, the involvement of the youth in election violence, strange campaign promises and the use of the media to fuel violence as some of the worrying trends in the country’s elections.

He said increasingly people were seeking public office not as a means to serve their people but primarily as a short-cut to fame, influence and wealth.

“As a result, candidates are prepared to spend any amount of money in their campaigns. When elections are monetised, the issue is not how good you are but how much money you can distribute,” he said, and stressed that with money, politicians could buy unprincipled election officials to corrupt electoral outcomes or buy the votes of the poor.

The EC Chairman noted that poverty “puts ordinary people at the mercy of the political class” but indicated that the vote was one of the “strongest weapons” that the poor could use to get out of their poverty.

“When a politician is using enormous amounts of money in his/her election campaign, any perceived obstacle or threat to his/her goal of winning can easily trigger a resort to violence or mischief. Eventually, the successful politician is beholden to his/her financiers because campaign money is viewed as an investment to be recouped while in office,” he said.

He, therefore, called for a concerted effort to fight “the corrosive influence of money” in elections “if we are to avoid a situation where money bags dominate electoral choice or where rewards to the political sector far outweigh rewards to other sectors of society, including the private sector, which is supposed to be the engine of growth”.

Dr Afari-Gyan said political parties had virtually occupied the entire national space, a situation which had the tendency to elevate the party above the people.
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Besides, he said, it could lead to a situation where people were identified primarily on the basis of their party affiliation, thereby losing their identities. It could also induce the notion that the government had to solve all problems, thereby inhibiting private initiatives.

On youth and election violence, the EC Chairman said the youth were supposed to see themselves as having an even greater stake in the affairs of the country, for which reason they must demand rational electoral behaviour from all actors.

“It appears that all it takes is a small amount of money, plus hard liquor, to turn particularly the big-muscled of our youth into gangs, thugs or militias to wreak violence on political opponents or do all sorts of dirty assignments in connection with elections,” he lamented.

Touching on campaign promises, Dr Afari-Gyan said instead of the articulation of policies and programmes, election campaigns were increasingly littered with concrete promises.

He cautioned politicians that a tall list of campaign promises could eventually “become an albatross around a politician’s neck”.
He condemned the use of the media, particularly radio, to instigate violence against political opponents, officials of the EC or so-called ‘foreigners’.

He said no Ghanaian was a foreigner anywhere within the territorial borders of Ghana and indicated that by the country’s electoral law, a political party might appoint any Ghanaian as its agent anywhere in Ghana, provided the person was appointed in accordance with the law.

Dr Afari-Gyan tasked the electoral actors, namely, the government, the EC, political parties, candidates, the electorate, security personnel, the media, civil society organisations and the Judiciary to demonstrate rational electoral behaviour.

He said the EC was committed to laying out a transparent framework for the management and conduct of elections, building integrity into the electoral system and applying the laws, rules and regulations uniformly.

He asked the government to provide the EC with the needed funds and resources, allow the commission to work without interference and refrain from taking undue advantage of its incumbency.

The EC Chairman called for internal party democracy in respect of elections to party leadership positions and the selection of candidates, transparency of party finances and absence of personality attacks, abusive language and ethnic or religious incitement.

He asked the electorate to register and cast their ballots only once, vote on the basis of their conscience and allow other voters to vote freely.

He charged security personnel to keep the general peace, give equal protection to all candidates, election officers and voters, protect election materials from getting into wrong hands and arrest and prosecute election offenders, irrespective of their party affiliations.

He urged the media to give equal access to parties and candidates and report their activities accurately, provide information that enabled the electorate to make informed choices and refrain from publishing materials that whipped up ethnic or religious sentiments or the results of opinion polls that they could not vouch for.

He asked civil society organisations to scrutinise the activities of the EC, participate in electoral education, expose abuse of incumbency and campaign for peaceful election.

He requested the Judiciary to settle election disputes fairly and punish offenders without delay, saying, “The requirement to be fair becomes problematic if the Judiciary is not independent or is corrupt.”

Dr Afari-Gyan concluded that the degree of freeness and fairness of elections would always depend on the extent of rational behaviour across the board, from the EC down to the ordinary voter, stressing, “We cannot have democracy if we cannot find ways to make our institutions vibrant and hold our leaders accountable at all times.”