Franklin Cudjoe doubles down on accusations of EC
By Selorm GBORBIDZI, Accra
President of Imani Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe, has doubled down on accusations he made about the EC’s decision to exclude the people of Santrokofi, Akpafu, Likpe, and Lolobi (SALL) in the 2020 December polls.
Reacting to a statement issued by the EC in defense of their decision, Cudjoe described the EC’s actions as “a flagrant violation of the right to vote of the said voters, which amounts to being disenfranchised. As a consequence, the people of the SALL Traditional Areas do not have representation in the 8th Parliament of the 4th Republic.”
He further accused the Commission of brazen dishonesty, by their description of his earlier statement about the disenfranchisement as “falsehood and misinformation” or “falsehood and untruths about the Commission”.
In an earlier rebuttal, the EC had refuted claims by Franklin Cudjoe that it had disenfranchised residents of the Santrokofi, Akpafu, Lolobi, and Likpe (SALL) areas in the 2020 parliamentary elections.
The EC had insisted that Mr Cudjoe’s accusations were false and without basis.
“The Commission never disenfranchised the good people of the newly created Guan Constituency. It is not in our interest to do so.”
However, the President of IMANI insisted that “none of the so-called “facts surrounding the inability of the residents of SALL now the Guan Constituency, to vote in the 2020 Parliamentary Election” that are recited in the 14th May 2024 statement of the Electoral Commission, can take away the simple, indisputable fact that, on the eve of the 2020 elections, the Electoral Commission publicly announced that the people of SALL could not vote in the Parliamentary election. The people of SALL were, therefore, disenfranchised and are not represented in the 8th Parliament of the 4th Republic.”
He accused the EC of not appreciating that “Article 47(6) of the 1992 Constitution makes it clear that ‘Where the boundaries of a constituency established under this article are altered as a result of a review, the alteration shall come into effect upon the 2 next dissolution of Parliament.’”
Based on this, he stressed that “whatever changes to existing constituency boundaries were to come into effect with the creation of the Guan Constituency would only come into effect upon the dissolution of that Parliament that is on 6th January 2021.”
The Electoral Commission maintained, should have known that the creation of the Guan Constituency could not come into effect and alter existing constituency boundaries before the holding of the 7th December 2020 elections.
He found the explanation by the EC that “the Commission was not aware that Parliament was on recess at the time it received the letter from the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development requesting it to create a new Constituency,” to be incredulous, accusing it of not bothering to check on the Parliament when it was preparing an Instrument that could only come into effect after being placed before Parliament.
He also related that despite assurances from EC officials to the chiefs and people of SALL would be allowed to vote in their “mother constituency,” at a meeting held on December 1, 2020, the EC made a U-turn just five days later, by issuing the press statement preventing SALL residents from voting in the Parliamentary Elections.
Franklin Cudjoe therefore described the EC’s letter as “not only brazenly dishonest but puts on stark display to the whole world the gross incompetence of the Jean Mensah-led Electoral Commission.”
