A stalwart of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), Kwame Sanaa-Poku Jantuah, has said rather than laying out a policy to alter the time for ending voting from 5pm to 3pm, the Electoral Commission (EC) should submit a Constitutional Instrument (C.I.) to Parliament to change the date for organising elections in Ghana.
He says the EC should seek to pushing the election day from December 7 to the first Saturday in December.
The Electoral Commission has justified the decision to shift the closing time of voting from 5:00pm to 3:00pm during the upcoming 2024 general elections.
Jean Adukwei Mensa, Chair of the Commission, has emphasised that this adjustment aims to facilitate the transparent and orderly collation of votes by electoral officers in broad daylight.
But according to Kwame Jantuah, since some of the election days –December 7 –fall on a weekday, it inconveniences many to abandon their jobs to exercise their franchise.
The EC’s motive of orderly collating and counting of results in broad daylight he said, is not going to be achieved if the day of the election falls on a weekday.
“Maybe what the EC should do, should probably send a C.I. to Parliament and indicate that elections should be held first Saturday of the month of December instead of 7th because 7th can fall on a weekday but if it’s first Saturday, at least not a lot of people work on Saturdays and employers will be prepared to give leverage for voting.
“Maybe that is what we should be looking at instead of saying that you drastically would change from 5pm to 3pm,” he noted.
“Even if we want to try it, move it an hour to say, 4 pm, to give people the time,” he told Roland Walker on the ‘Big Issue’ on TV3’s New Day Friday, December 15, 2023.
Expressing further his reservations with the proposal, he noted people can rush up to the polling centre at the close of polls and would still be mandated to vote, pushing the time to late in the night which would inadvertently defeat the purpose for the changes.
Speaking on the same show, Abraham Amaliba, the Director of Conflict Resolution for the National Democratic Congress (NDC), said the EC just wants to disenfranchise people with the policy.
“Ever since Jean Mensa took over the reins of the Electoral Commission, she has developed a penchant for throwing up ideas that seem to disenfranchise people. We are still dealing with the ‘Ghana card only’ brouhaha and you have again introduced this one. I think Jean Mensa doesn’t know the terrain of this country. I’m not sure she has visited all the district offices to know the rough terrain that we have in this country.
“The issue in this country is that voting days are not declared as holidays. People would have to go to work before coax their employers to give them time to go and work. If people don’t work on the voting day they will be fired.
“So, by closing at 3, Jean Mensa is seeking to disenfranchise these people who are bound to go to work and come to vote,“ he reemphasised.
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