District-level elections: Ill-prepared EC went to sleep after 2020 elections – Vanderpuye
A former Minister for Local Government, Decentralization and Rural Development, Edwin Nii Lante Vanderpuye, has emphatically stated that the Electoral Commission (EC) failed to prepare adequately for this year’s district-level elections.
The MP for Ododiodio maintains that the EC can not be pardoned for the many challenges encountered on Tuesday, December 19.
The MP’s comment follows the series of reports revealing low voter turnout and the EC’s swift rescheduling of polls at some electoral areas due to technical challenges.
According to Mr. Vanderpuye, the EC had about two years to plan before executing the election; therefore, such lapses are unacceptable.
“I will not give any excuses for the EC’s lack of preparedness. The EC was inefficient and ineffective in this particular election. We must call a spade a spade.
The EC has two years to prepare for district-level elections because they happen between major national elections. After the 2020 election, the EC knew they would have district-level elections this year,” Mr Vanderpuye noted.
According to him, this election should have happened as far back as August but was pushed to September before a new date was set in December.
He thus wondered why, after several postponements and a two-year preparation, the EC would fail to deliver a smooth process.
“In all these instances and times, what has been the preparation towards this district-level election?” he quizzed.
Should we continue to have an EC that, after national elections, will go to sleep and then will wake up from slumber, come and conduct district level elections within three months, go to sleep again and wake up six months into national elections in 2024 and come and mess up again?”
He reminded the EC of its mandate to prepare adequately for any election, including the district level election, which is crucial for an effective local governance system.
“I think we should be able to call the EC out and tell the EC that it is their duty and mandate to prepare sufficiently, adequately and well for every election in this country. This has been the character of the EC as far as the district-level elections are concerned. They’ve not shown the right attitude, mindset and preparation towards the district-level election,” he said.
“As such, immediately after this district-level elections, all the things that we have seen now, they should start preparing towards those things so that in 2024 in the major elections, we will not have these hiccups that we’ve witnessed in the district-level elections”.
He argued that the EC had enough time to prevent the printer failure that caused delays, making their explanation untenable.
“The EC knew its timetable, so the EC should have selected the contractors, prepared itself, and given them adequate time to print and deliver before the elections. You don’t give a contract, maybe three or four days or a week, to an election.
“How do you even do checks and due diligence to make sure the printing has been good, no mistakes, and nothing has happened? You must prepare, and that’s why they have a whole year to prepare for district-level elections.
And so they can’t come today and tell us we have hiccups because our contractors could not deliver on time. It means the EC itself did not prepare enough to give their contractors adequate time to be able to print and execute the mandate that was given to them,” he argued during an interview on Joy News.