Deputy Chairman of the Electoral Commission in charge of Corporate Services, Dr. Eric Bossman Asare has said that they have not reached the point where they will consider re-running the parliamentary election in the Ablekuma North Constituency.
He noted that they have used other means to collate the results, thus require police protection to declare.
“So, for Ablekuma North, we have not reached the point where we will say we don’t have the results. When we try and we cannot get the results, that is when we will resort to the rerun. The rerun will be a last option,” he said in response to a question by the MP for South Dayi, Rockson Nelson Dafeamekpor in Parliament on June 19.
Mr Dafeamekpor sought to know whether the Commission had any plans of re-running the election in the constituency owing to the stalemate over some polling station results.
Six months after the 2024 elections, constituents of Ablekuma North are yet to be represented in Parliament because results of three polling stations have still not been declared by the Returning Officer.
Results for the three polling stations are said to have been lost as the EC itself has no copies of the results.
Several re-collation attempts by the EC have proved futile because both NPP and NDC party supporters have disrupted the re-collation exercise.
The Electoral Commissioner has therefore petitioned the Ghana Police Service, seeking intense security measures for a declaration of the results.
This has caused suggestions from some political quarters that a re-run of the Ablekuma North parliamentary elections could solve the stalemate.
He argued that considering the processes that have been achieved so far, it won’t be advisable to organize a re-run of the Ablekuma North elections.
Dr. Bossman Asare noted that the processes must be allowed to continue to bring finality to the matter.
“The Commission strongly believes that for the processes that have gone on so far, if we go to the good people of this country that we are abolishing everything, it will not be good for our democracy so let’s allow the processes to continue,” he said on the floor of the House.
Touching on the cost of the December 7 elections, Dr. Asare disclosed that they spent GHC3.6 million on the reprinting of presidential ballots and GHC 2.4 million on parliamentary ballots for the Eastern and Western Regions.
