The Deputy General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mustapha Gbande, has attributed the challenges that interrupted Tuesday’s assembly and unit committee elections in some voting centres across the country to the poor leadership skills of Ghana’s Electoral Commissioner.
Mustapha Gbande, in an interview on Eyewitness News on Citi FM, said the NDC followed the election processes very closely to ensure electoral mistakes that plagued the polls did not reoccur in the general elections in 2024.
“We are very interested, and we have been very much interested in the activities of this election because it has a bearing on the next elections that will be organized. So, we followed keenly as far as the district assembly elections are concerned.”
“The situation that we find ourselves in as a nation is largely because we have an electoral commissioner who does not believe in consensus building and does not want to learn. We would have avoided this situation if she had engaged stakeholders and had been willing to do what was right.”
He added that if the electoral commissioner does not reform her leadership skills, the 2024 elections will come with attendant negative consequences.
“What is more shocking is that six hours before the election, the commissioner did not envisage that inventory might not have reached the centres, and she did not even check to ensure that they were in order. This clearly tells us that we are dealing with Jean Mensa, who is largely incompetent and has demonstrated low experience in terms of elections management. It is dangerous going into 2024, particularly if the same personality is still going to be our electoral commissioner.”
