Jean Mensa-led EC financed dead parties to cheer the commission – Mahama

Former President John Dramani Mahama has accused the Jean Mensa-led Electoral Commission of resurrecting and finding financing for dead smaller political parties in Ghana just to support whatever decision the elections management body takes.

According to the 2020 presidential candidate for the NDC, that is not the way to ensure electoral reforms after major elections, such as the 2020 general polls.

Speaking on Radio Tamale as part of his thank-you tour on Thursday, August 19, Mr Mahama described these smaller parties as a pack of wolves that are taken to meetings of the Inter-Party Advisory Committee to rubber-stamp the EC’s decisions.

“That is why Ghana we have continued to improve after any election because we do a post mortem of what didn’t go so well and what went well, and then based on discussions, we block those loopholes to make the next elections better.

“Often when we have done this, we have done under the ambit of a neutral arbiter, some respected person.

“I remember that under the last electoral commission, the Azu Crabbe Commission was the one that sat and discussed issues of electoral reforms, especially with regards to the register.

“And so we had expected that after this election, concerning the controversies that had existed between our party and the EC, that the EC will come out with some neutral arbiter; put somebody we respect to listen to all of us and come up with a report and say that these are the suggestions that the political parties had made in terms of electoral reforms.

“Instead, immediately, the electoral commission went into a retreat with IPAC, and there are a lot of small parties they have gone to resurrect; these parties didn’t exist before.

“They have managed to find financing for them, and they are just a pack of wolves that they take to IPAC and cheerlead; [they are] cheerleaders of the Electoral Commission chairperson and her people. Anything they say, let us vote.”