Winner of Ghana’s 2012 elections to be declared within 72 hours

Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, Chairman of the Electoral Commission on Wednesday said the Commission would declare the results of Friday’s election within 72 hours after the close of polls even though the country would know who is winning in 48 hours.

The Commission, he said, would not rush to announce the Presidential result but would work within reasonable time to announce it

Speaking at a news conference organized by the Ghana Journalist Association (GJA) in Accra to bring to light the preparedness of the EC for Friday’s election, Dr Afari-Gyan said all materials needed for the elections were already on the field to be distributed to the polling centres very early on Friday.

He said the verification machines were tried and tested during the Tuesday’s Special Voting, and was convinced that they were healthy for the job ahead even in the largest polling centres.

Answering questions on the problems associated with the Special Voting where some security officials were not able to vote because their names were missing from the register, he noted the blame could not be put at the doorstep of the Commission because it was the security agencies, which failed to submit the particulars of their ID cards and polling stations during the compilation of the list for the special voting.

“The EC cannot distinguish between professionals so in an exercise like this, we rely on information from the various security agencies who compiled the list for us”, adding that it was based on the information provided that the Commission compiled the list of 29,914 members of the security services.

“It has been agreed that those, who were unable to vote should go to their polling stations on Friday to vote”, he said, and noted that both personnel and the media who have their accreditation, would be allowed to go ahead of the queue when they go to their polling stations so they could vote early and go back to work on Election Day.

Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan told the media that as a matter of principle and his friendship with all the candidates, he would not vote in the Friday’s election.

On a lighter note, he said, “a referee does not have to vote for one team” because it would be practically the same as taking sides.

He said the EC would still rely on fax machines to receive results from returning officers because it was important to see signatures endorsing the results and copies available to political party representatives to quicken the pace.

On the issue of minors, who registered to vote, he said, since they were not challenged from registering they could not be prevented from voting and that the best voters could do was to persuade them not to vote, adding that the anomaly could only be rectified by the law court.

Source: GNA