The Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) has agreed to investigate the conduct of the Electoral Commission (EC) in the retirement and disposal of some election-related equipment.
This follows a petition by IMANI Ghana on May 6, 2024, which raised concerns about the potential misconduct and conflict of interest within the EC.
IMANI alleges that election equipment, including Biometric Verification Devices (BVDs) and Biometric Voter Registration Systems (BVRs) procured over the past decade, may have been improperly handled and disposed of.
It added that the commission’s response to concerns about the said equipment, which it confirmed it has auctioned, indicates a desire to avoid accountability.
According to the Executive Director at IMANI, Franklin Cudjoe, such conduct amounted to “misappropriation”, “wastage”, and “misuse” of resources, adding, “At a time when the nation cannot service its debts and is in the midst of a tight IMF-supervised fiscal regime, such egregious conduct cannot be tolerated.”
“Furthermore, we stated our belief that the EC’s most recent conduct has been necessitated by a need to curtail transparency and accountability, and thus was motivated by a collective conflict of interest and potential corruption. By its actions, it is attempting to erase inventory records and physical evidence of the blatant falsehoods it has told over the last four years regarding the purchase history of expensive electoral equipment.
“We asserted our longstanding claim that the EC’s electoral equipment is a portfolio of multiple items, bought and refurbished at different intervals between 2011 and 2019. That portfolio does not uniformly date to 2011 or 2012 as the EC has falsely and persistently claimed, and could thus not be so uniformly obsolete as to warrant a firesale to mysterious bidders, who have kept the prime portions for themselves and discarded the rest to be used as scrap. Ghana cannot continue to be milked in this fashion,” he further stated.
Responding to the petition, CHRAJ has asked IMANI to provide it with information relating to the allegations to assist with investigations.
“Kindly make the said information available to the Commission within ten days upon receipt of this letter to allow for expeditious investigations,” portions of the statement read.
Read the CHRAJ’s full statement below;