Potential challenges in announcing regional collation results first

There are potential challenges to the Electoral Commission’s (EC) recent directive that all regional collation results for the December 7 presidential election would be announced before the subsequent declaration of the national results.

The appointment of a regional collation officer for each region to take charge of the regional collation of presidential results from the constituencies in each region, which was introduced before the 2020 general election, as prescribed in regulation 38 of C.I. 127, the Constitutional Instrument regulating elections in Ghana, in the first place, was not needed in a unitary state like Ghana.

The election results should not have been handled as if Ghana was a federal state, like Nigeria.

Nigeria

In Nigeria, section 34 of their constitution provides that a candidate is required to obtain at least 25 per cent of the total valid votes in two-thirds (2/3) of the 36 states in the country.

In contrast, a presidential candidate in Ghana is not required to obtain a threshold of the total valid votes in any region to be elected as a president.

The threshold is rather tied to the total valid votes of the entire country as provided by Regulation 44 of C.I. 127, which states that in the presidential election, the candidate who receives more than 50 per cent of the total valid votes should be declared the elected president.

This proves that neither the collation of the constituency results of the presidential election at the regional level adds any legitimacy nor transparency to the electoral process.

Therefore, apart from its statistical significance, it doesn’t add anything unique or value to the presidential election. It rather impedes the smooth transmission of the constituency results to the national collation centre.

Secondly, it increases the controversies that characterise collation centres.

When it comes to Ghana’s presidential election, Regulation 2(1) of the C.I. 127 appoints the Chairperson of the Commission as the Returning Officer on the basis that the whole country automatically becomes one constituency.

It, thus, demands that any constituency results received at the regional level must quickly be transmitted to the national collation centre for collation of the constituency results.

Since there is no link between any of the 276 constituencies in the country, either in the same region or otherwise, the national collation should be done independently of the regional collation, since the whole nation turns into one constituency in the presidential election as earlier mentioned.

Baffling

It is, therefore, baffling for the EC to communicate to the public that all the regional collation results would be announced before the national results are announced.

Does it mean that if, for example, the results of one or two constituencies are unduly delayed, the results of the rest would not be announced when in fact they have no bearing on the results from the other constituencies?

The Commission should also be mindful of the fact that the regional collation officers are not Returning Officers so none of the processes terminates with them. Their role makes them a conduit of channelling results to the national collation centre.

If the EC does not tread cautiously, tension is likely to be heightened when the results are not officially made public as early as practicable, as and when they come in from the constituencies via the Regional Directors, but decide to wait for all the constituency results from a particular region before they are announced.

The Commission may mean well by waiting for all the results from the regional collation centres before announcing the national collated results, but keeping the whole nation in darkness for any lengthy period when it can announce the results it would be receiving from time to time, could lead to unnecessary speculation and its attendant uneasiness.

The writer is an Election Consultant & President, Global Elections Gurus (GLG).
E-mail: kwmoah@yahoo.com