Samoa Addo urges EC to review parliamentary results collation

Nii Kpakpo Samoa Addo, a prominent member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has urged the Electoral Commission (EC) to review its 2024 general election collation of parliamentary election results. 

Speaking on Asaase Radio’s “The Forum” on Saturday (28 December), Addo highlighted a disturbing trend of chaos erupting at collation centres, which he believes undermines the democratic process.

Addo noted that while polling stations generally remain calm during voting and counting, tensions often escalate during the collation of parliamentary results at constituency centres. 

“The EC has run elections under the fourth Republican constitution for a number of years now and we’ve all come to appreciate various challenges that are associated with the elections,” he said. 

“So far we don’t seem to have a problem with the polling stations because it seems everybody wants to be patient and wait for the elections to be completed at the polling stations.”

“The problem arises when it comes to the parliamentary elections being collated at the constituency collation centre.”

According to Addo, a “dangerous trend” has emerged where candidates and their supporters, upon realising they are losing, resort to disruptive tactics.

“Candidates and their supporters have decided that, OK, we’ll wait first to see how we are doing at the polling stations where we think that we are losing, then we will cause mayhem,” he explained.

Addo called on the EC to take proactive steps to curb such incidents from occurring in future elections. 

“If the Electoral Commission does not take a review of this election and take pragmatic steps to stop this particular trend, we’ll have a situation where it will become the rule of the mighty, brute force, where people will just wait, gather their results, realise that they are losing, and decide that they will make it impossible for the collation and the constituency office to happen,” he warned.

Addo also raised concerns about the security of collation centres, stating that “Persistently, we are getting these clear signs that most of these centres are not secure.” 

He proposed relocating collation centres to police divisional headquarters or heavily securing existing venues. 

“If we decide to use the secondary schools, we must secure the area,” he said. “There must be enough armed policemen deployed so that it is only accredited persons who enter the collation centre area.”

“That’s supposed to be the norm but we are realising that the stakes are so high in some of these elections that we are better off having these collations than probably at the police divisional headquarters.”

He reiterated the urgency of reforming post-collation procedures, describing it as a critical step to safeguarding the integrity of Ghana’s elections. 

“The post-collation of the parliamentary results must be reviewed. It is very, very important,” Addo stressed.

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