EC is late with December polls' processes – Mac Manu

The Electoral Commission of Ghana is late with its processes in connection with the December 7 polls, Mr Peter Mac Manu, the National Campaign Manager for the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) has said.

In his estimation, the EC should have gone through certain processes and done certain things a long time ago, but those things were now being done.

“Elections have timelines and you have four years to deal with an election programme, so, I can’t understand why we have to run around last minute,” he told Class91.3FM’s Paa Kwesi Parker-Wilson in an interview at the EC on Thursday, 20 October shortly after the parties participated in the balloting exercise for positions on the parliamentary ballot paper.

“I have always said consistently that election is a complex process that demands complex planning and complex execution and you have a four-year timeline to do the planning and execution and the first thing you need to do is to review the previous election, look at the setbacks, and ensure that you move to make amends; amends that are legal and constitutional are taken to parliament, amends that are administrative are done in-house and amends that are political are done.

“You do this by reviewing the previous election internally with your staff and professionals and then externally with other stakeholders like political parties, civil society, media groups and even looking at the reports submitted by the various observer groups,” he said.

Asked by Parker-Wilson if, in his observation, the EC had done all the things he enumerated, Mr Mac Manu said: “It’s rather late because if you look at when they launched their strategic plan, a strategic plan for two, three years should have been launched three years ago, so that it is implemented at this point in time. But in any case, better late than never.”