Dr. Serebour Quaicoe, the Director of Electoral Services at the Electoral Commission (EC), believes policy think-tank, IMANI, should have eaten an humble pie and apologized to the commission for false accusations.
He was clarifying why he earlier said if IMANI fails to put its house in order, there's a huge possibility of the respected think-tank becoming a “talk tank”.
IMANI has raised concerns over the Electoral Commission’s disposal of election-related equipment it deems obsolete.
The ECs recent disposal and auctioning of its equipment has compelled IMANI to petition Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) to investigate them.
According to the Executive Director at IMANI, Franklin Cudjoe, the EC’s actions constitute “misappropriation”, “wastage,” and “misuse” of resources.
“We do not believe that the EC and its commercial counterparties in these transactions complied with the highest standards of data handling and protection required in the transfer and/or disposal of such sensitive equipment. At any rate, none of them had the requisite certifications to be trusted with such a task”, the think tank argued in a statement released on Monday, May 6.
The organization added that “the EC’s most recent conduct has been necessitated by a need to curtail transparency and accountability, and thus was motivated by a collective conflict of interest and potential corruption. By its actions, it is attempting to erase inventory records and physical evidence of the blatant falsehoods it has told over the last four years regarding the purchase history of expensive electoral equipment”.
“We asserted our longstanding claim that the EC’s electoral equipment is a portfolio of multiple items, bought and refurbished at different intervals between 2011 and 2019. That portfolio does not uniformly date to 2011 or 2012 as the EC has falsely and persistently claimed, and could thus not be so uniformly obsolete as to warrant a firesale to mysterious bidders, who have kept the prime portions for themselves and discarded the rest to be used as scrap. Ghana cannot continue to be milked in this fashion”, it emphasized.
But Dr. Serebour Quaicoe has shot down the IMANI’s arguments labeling their accusations as empty.
He alluded to a similar position of the think tank on the EC registration exercise during the COVID era where the EC anticipated huge turnout of over 4 million people within the 40-day exercise but IMANI and their bosses doubted the possibility of the figures amidst other similar claims regarding their machinery.
Dr. Serebour Quaicoe narrated how the EC shamed IMANI stating “we ended up registering 17 million within 38 days”, adding “the best thing” the think tank should have done after realizing this achievement by the electoral management body was admit they erred and say “I am sorry”; but the Commission didn’t receive any such response from IMANI.
Regarding the obsolete machines, the Commissioner explained that the manufacturers had served notice to them that the machines have “end of life” meaning they no longer produce them, hence recommended they get new ones and also upgrade their data center at an estimated cost of 15 million dollars.
Data Centres
But the Commission built two new data centers at a cost of 6 million dollars, this he said to buttress the point that the EC is saving cost and their decisions are geared towards building a robust electoral system.
Dr. Serebour Quaicoe therefore cautioned IMANI stating “they don’t have any basis to crucify Electoral Commission”.
He noted that “this is why I said if they don’t take care, instead of people thinking they are think tank, they will be talk tank. Because if you keep talking without any basis, have you not then turned into a talk tank”.
“If you pooh-pooh the Electoral Commission, you’re destroying the image of the Commission”, he further cautioned.
The Electoral Commissioner made these submissions on Peace FM’s “Kokrokoo” show.
