*BACKGROUND*
In an address at a press conference on Thursday, 12th September 2024, Samuel Tettey, a Deputy Chairman of Ghana’s Electoral Commission in charge of operations, questioned why the National Democratic Congress (NDC) did not call for a forensic audit of the voters’ register in 2016, which register he claimed, contained plants and animals representing voters?
This language did not appear to represent Samuel Tettey’s style of language as I have come to know him.
At first thought, it appeared to me as though the press conference statement was written for Samuel Tettey by someone to read. If such an irresponsible statement had come from Bossman Asare, Deputy Chairman of the Electoral Commission in charge of Corporate Affairs, I would have deemed it as the “new normal.” That type of language is the stock in trade of the NPP tainted man, Bossman Asare.
But since I have no proof that the address was not written by Samuel Tettey himself, and even if it were so, he failed to exercise good judgement and read it, I have to ask him why the Electoral Commission is avoiding an independent audit of the 2024 voters register?
*SAMUEL TETTEY/EC SOILING THEIR OWN IMAGE*
There is an adage among the EĘ‹e people that *a sheep that thinks it is soiling the environment for the people by dropping watery faeces in town is rather soiling its own buttocks.* Samuel Tettey thought he was castigating the NDC, not knowing he was rather exposing the *inefficiency and incompetence* of the Electoral Commission he has been part of since 2008, and thus disgracing himself. The fundamental question Samuel Tettey and the EC have to answer is whether it was the NDC that compiled the voters register in 2016 and captured plants and animals as voters, for which reason he was holding NDC responsible at the press conference, or the Electoral Commission (EC) of which he is a Deputy Chairman? Samuel Tettey should tell Ghanaians whether the EC deliberately captured *plants and animals* instead of *homo sapiens* in the 2016 register for the NDC to react to? Is the NDC registered as a party to deal with the gross incompetence and inefficiency of Samuel Tettey and his Electoral Commission?
At any rate, what is the logic in stating that because NDC did not call for a forensic audit of the voters register in 2016, the party has forfeited its right to demand so in 2024, or any other year? The NDC might not have called for an audit because the Electoral Commission in 2016 was not staffed with officials that were openly identified as NPP members as the case is today. If the first time is a mistake or an oversight, the second time is a choice. Simplicita!
Samuel Tettey, Bossman Asare, and Jean Adukwei Mensa should know that, *to get to one’s destination, not every dog that barks at you deserves a stone; you reserve the stone for the dogs that can bite.* There is thus never the wrong time to do the right thing. As long as the intentions of the Electoral Commission are not transparent but opaque, its path will not be sure. The EC should stop wasting our ears on its rhetoric that it is determined to ensure a credible voters register and a transparent, free, and fair election. *The success of any policy of any organisation such as the EC is measured on its outcomes, not on its intentions.* For the fact that the outcome of the voters register is fraught with avoidable errors, the EC can’t claim it is committed to a free and fair election.
Samuel Tettey, Bossman Asare, and Jean Adukwei Mensa claim they have corrected all the anomalies detected by the NDC in the 2024 voters register. If that is so, shouldn’t it rather be the EC that should be chasing NDC to come for the corrected register and calling for forensic audit to vindicate itself and “shame” the NDC? *Truth does not mind being questioned. It is a lie that does not like being challenged.* Jean Adukwei Mensa, Bossman Asare, and Samuel Tettey do not, and will never, like the NDC because the party’s spirit irritates their demons.
The Electoral Commission must realise that the piling up of NPP apparatchiks in the Commission by President Akufo Addo, which is aggravated by some reckless comments by the EC Chairperson, Jean Adukwei Mensa, and the two deputies, Bossman Asare and Samuel Tettey, a trust deficit of homongous proportion has been created between the Commission and the opposition political parties, especially, the NDC. The refusal of these politically tainted EC officials to transparently address the concerns of the NDC and other Civil Society Organisations has altered the election operating theatre from co-operation to confrontation.
*Societies are built on the trust and integrity of their leaders.* That truth and integrity have eluded the nation under the Jean Mensa/Bossman Asare Electoral Commission. We have heard Sammi Awuku, a former National Organiser of the NPP, say that “the NPP will win the 2024 elections with a strategy that the NDC will not understand.” Is the manipulation of the voters register by the EC part of that strategy?” Have we not heard H. E. President Akufo Addo and Bryan Acheampong say on several occasions that they would never hand over power to John Mahama and the NDC? Is the EC assisting the NPP to succeed in that diabolical agenda and push the nation into chaos?
Jean Mensa and Bossman Asare must know that *when a deity becomes impotent, worshipers turn their back to it.* The lack of credibility and integrity of the current EC (impotency) is the cause of believers of democracy turning their back to it.
*NEW IMAGE FOR THE EC*
The Electoral Commission must learn to deal with the turbulences of the commoner (NDC and CSOs) as well as the storms of the mighty (NPP), which is blowing the country into a disaster. The Electoral Commission, instead of solving the problems associated with our democracy, has rather become the problem, an albatross around our neck. Those who make peaceful change impossible don’t only provide a fertile ground for a revolutionary change but also make that change certain. When we all become caught up in the vortex of that cyclone – *that tornado, that typhoon, that willy willy* – nobody can escape.
I would humbly like to tell Jean Adukwei Mensa that *God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we could listen twice as much as we speak.* Jean Mensa and Bossman Asare must learn to listen to the NDC and the CSOs. People want to be heard; people want to feel that their voices matter. A listening and accommodating EC is needed to drive our democracy in the right direction. It is better to move slowly in the right direction than to speed in the wrong direction. *A cheetah uses its speed to hunt, not to prove to dogs that it is faster.*
Jean Adukwei Mensa/Bossman Asare Electoral Commission must know that *there is no entity, human, spiritual, or extra terrestrial, or all combined, that can change the resolve of Ghanians to dismantle this bastardised system to pave way for the Ghana we want, a Ghana that allows the people to freely choose those who rule over them.*
Ghanaians refused to be pushed around by the devious political machinations of the EC and its Ogyigyifo collaborators. We shall be led by the dream in our hearts; a dream to reset Ghana and all its corrupted and bastardised institutions to rebuild the Ghana handed over to us by Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. *In pursuit of this dream, the sky, and not the grave, is our goal. We will not betray our purpose; not today, not tomorrow, not ever. We have long stopped being worriors and started being warriors.*
If the EC and its collaborators think that a major opposition party is too small to make an impact on a credible voters register, they should try spending the night with a mosquito.
*MISSING VOICES OF CONSCIENCE*
In all these hullabaloo, Rev. Dr. Ernest Adu Gyamfi and his National Peace Council, which was cacophonously vociferous in times past, have remained silent. They see no evil and hear no evil. Maybe they are doing much unknown to us. Where are our traditional leaders of the National House of Chiefs? Are they also observing what Very Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Martey, a former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana said, that when he wanted to speak about the wrongs in the Akufo Addo government, he was reminded that he hailed from the same Akan tribe as the President? And where are our previously loudly heard religious leaders? Is the Ghana Bar Association still alive?
All of these voices of conscience have gone into hibernation, *allowing the Electoral Commission to display its razzmatazz: a noisy and noticeable show intended to attract undue attention.* We have by our silence entombed our democracy which was painfully restored in 1992. All these silent bodies will find their voices again when the NDC comes back to power. The inaction and loud silence of these hitherto vociferous bodies is driving the nation to a precipice, where it will slide into an abyss. When your silence allows the nation to slip into *an Armageddon: that last battle between good and evil before the day of reckoning; that dramatic and catastrophic conflict that is certain to destroy the nation Ghana; that final battle between the forces of good and evil,* Ghanaians will not remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends and the conscience of the nation.
When we reach that nightmarish stage, where the falcon can not hear the falconer, total anarchy will be unleashed unto the nation. *At that stage, whoever left us in the forest has no right to know what the wolves did to us, or what we did to them. There is no force more powerful than a depressed, suppressed, and frustrated people determined to rise.* And rise we shall, and must.
The last time I listened to the Chairman of the National Peace Council, Rev. Dr. Ernest Adu Gyamfi, on Television, he was speaking with anger and fury. Papa, (that’s how we call our respected religious leaders) how can you be seeking peace and spitting fire? Anger does not reconcile people. To Papa Ernest Adu Gyamfi and the National Peace Council, I say, if you can’t be a bridge to connect people, don’t be a wall to separate them.
Peace be upon you and upon the nation
*CONCLUSION*
If the Electoral Commission claims it has rectified all anomalies in the 2024 voters register, including removing the plants and animals it had itself captured in the register; if the EC has absolutely nothing to hide, *it should allow the independent audit of the voters register to vindicate itself and “shame” its critics.* That’s the only sure way that it can regain the trust it has lost.
To Jean Adukwei Mensa, I want to encourage you to step out and be remembered. At various critical times of the Electoral Commission, Dr. Afari Djan and Charlotte Osei stepped out and took charge. Both chairpersons allowed audit of the voters register at one time or the other, and that restored trust and peace.
Jean Adukwei Mensa, step out and take charge; don’t remain in the shadows. If there is chaos, it is you who will be held responsible, not your Deputies.
Dated: *Monday, 16th September 2024.*
