Is Ghana’s Electoral Commission ready for elections 2016?

Ghana’s Electoral Commission (EC) has in recent times come under criticism and accusation that it is not ready for the 2016 general elections scheduled for November.

The EC sometimes sweeps these criticisms under the carpet, especially when they are deemed to emanate from persons aligned with the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) who cannot be reasoned with and who hold that the voters register for the 2016 general election is incurably flawed.

Until now the EC has not given much reason for the most conservative and least concerned persons to doubt its readiness for election 2016.

But since photos of a supposed new logo of the EC got on social media ahead of its deployment, the Commission has begun to show a lack of resolution that is not befitting of an organization that handles something so delicate as elections on African soil.

Upon realizing the said new logo’s misalignment with the Ghanaian populace and getting a foreshadowing of the brewing distaste that the logo would meet with, officials of the EC are now hinting subtly that the logo is merely a proposed one and that it has not finally approved it.

And yet amidst this attempt to calm rising tempers, media reports show that the EC has already used the new logo on some public education brochures it has printed, most likely with the intention of distributing to the public.

The new logo has replaced the EC’s old logo and yet Ghanaians are to believe that the logo is merely being considered tentatively as a replacement?

Backtracking on this logo which it clearly intended to introduce – a logo too nearly identical to that of an educational and career counselling centre in Turkey – begs the question of whether the EC holds its own. Can the EC stand firm if ever the need should arise and withstand pressure from a political party or a group of parties?

If the EC is unable to meaningfully change something as simple as its logo, is the EC ready for the 2016 elections?

These questions aside, the timing of this attempt to change its logo is very telling on the Electoral Commission.

With questions surrounding its readiness for the elections, the NPP’s assertions that the voters register is bloated and unusable, and the EC’s own admission that a flawed register is a possible recipe for chaos, one would have thought rebranding would be the last thing on the EC’s agenda.

There is little doubt that the 2016 general elections will be fiercely contested considering the opposition’s posture on the voters register, coupled with their discontent and perceived heckling of the new Commissioner, Charlotte Osei, an appointee of President Mahama, who will himself be a candidate.

The stage has little room for bad gamble, half-hearted initiative and discrepancy in word and in deeds; and certainly no room for trial and error.

By Emmanuel Odonkor