Don’t entrust transmission of our results to foreign firm – PPP to EC

The Progressive Peoples Party (PPP) is urging the Electoral Commission (EC) to do whatever it could to ensure that the proposed electronic transmission of the December 7 election results should not be entrusted into the hands of a foreign firm.

The party either prefers a wholly-owned Ghanaian firm or at least a firm with a 50% Ghanaian ownership.

“We wish to recommend to the EC that it should be a condition in the bidding process that wholly-owned Ghanaian IT firms or firms with at least 50% Ghanaian ownership qualify to apply for this process. This is because we do not expect our election management system to be in the hands of any foreign company”, the National Chairman of the party, Nii Allotey Brew-Hammond recommended in a letter addressed to the Chairperson of the EC, a copy of which was circulated to all the political parties, the press, Diplomatic Corps and Civic Organizations.

The PPP believes that Ghanaian IT firms have the wherewithal to carry out the electronic transmission of the results of the general elections and therefore, must be given the opportunity to prove their mettle.

Concurrent transmission of Presidential and Parliamentary results

That aside, the awake family wants the EC to also implement a mechanism for the polling station presidential elections results to be transmitted concurrently to the National Collation Center (NCC) and the Constituency Collation Centers (CCC).

“We make this case because the National Collation Centre is the place for the declaration of presidential elections results since the EC Chairman is the Returning Officer for the presidential elections. It is difficult to understand why the polling station results of presidential elections should be transmitted initially to the CCC before a constituency collated presidential election results are then transmitted to the NCC”, the party explained.

It added: “This exercise will require absolute vigilance on the part of the security services to ensure that vital security and communication installations such as transmission lines, electricity, media houses and their transmissions, and the state broadcaster’s transmissions are not disrupted in any way.”

The party, that notwithstanding, called for the appointment of independent auditors to authenticate the results that will be produced from the process, to avoid any form of manipulations.

“The EC cannot implement this exercise successfully without an audit component. We have a history where the EC could not and has not published the results of the verification process in the 2012 elections. We cannot leave this exercise to any chance for a possible manipulation of the ICT infrastructure,” it stated.