The Attorney-General, Godfred Yeboah Dame, has urged the Electoral Commission (EC) ensure the December 2024 election is conducted in a free and fair manner.
He says the Commission is mandated to ensure Ghanaians are able to exercise their franchise irrespective of the circumstances at play, to make sure the rule of law remains supreme in the nation’s democracy.
Speaking at the Annual Ghana Bar Association Conference held at the Great Hall of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Monday, September 09, 2024, Mr. Dame said “the indispensability of democracy as a tool for good governance has been expressed many times in history.”
“Mr. President, the lofty ideas expressed today about the creation of a sound business environment and using law as an instrument for change in the public sector will not materialise without a sustenance of the democratic order in which we live. Fundamental to democracy and preservation of the rule of law is the organisation of free and fair elections.
“The centrality of elections to democracy, and by necessary implication, the rule of law, implies that irrespective of the circumstance in which Ghana finds itself, the Electoral Commission must live up to its constitutional mandate of providing the mechanism for the citizenry to express themselves through the conduct of credible and fair elections,” he stated.
Mr. Dame continued that “the credibility of Ghanaian democracy and the conduct of elections in this country can clearly not be denied by any objective on-looker. We must resist the vain efforts of naysayers who constantly sow seeds of doubt about the credibility of Ghanaian elections.
“The Electoral Commission of Ghana has had a sound appreciation of the sacred constitutional responsibility it bears to the people of Ghana since 1992. Remarkably, it remained unshaken in its quest even in the teeth of COVID-19, and rose to the occasion in 2020 in delivering an internationally affirmed free, fair, and perhaps, the most transparent elections since the inception of the Constitution in 1992,” he espoused.
