Allow Cameras To Demystify EC Strong Room – Kofi Adams.

Kofi Adams has said as part of efforts to reform Ghana’s electoral system, the myth surrounding the Electoral Commission (EC)’s strong room must be demystified.

The National Organiser of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) believes that allowing cameras in that room which is the nerve centre of results collation during elections is a sure way of strengthening the country’s electioneering process.

Kofi Adams, who was commenting on lessons Ghana can learn from last week’s Nigerian elections, said demystifying the EC strong room will help Ghanaians and world get a better picture of events there.

“Demystifying what we call the strong room, the national collation centre was one thing I believe is good for us to also do that,” he said on Joy FM/Multi-TV, Saturday.

“In Ghana here, people think that when we say strong room, anything can happen there as if people can cook results there. We should be able to demystify it like all the political parties have been talking about in these reforms process let’s make it very open,” Kofi Adams urged.

He added that, “Let’s allow some cameras, accredited media persons for them to be able to cover so that it is not the story that I [of NDC] will come and tell or Nana Akomea [of NPP] will come and tell them, the whole world will be watching what is going on.”

The NDC National Organiser believes that the Nigerian elections, which saw the opposition candidate Gen Muhammadu Buhari beat incumbent Goodluck Jonathan, took lessons from Ghana’s election experience.

“I think there are a number of lessons they learnt from Ghana because many of the things they did are things that we are already doing,” he said.

Kofi Adams observed that, “there were some surprises but then generally in terms of the organization of the elections, there are a number of things [like] our commissioners took active part in the development of the process there were a number of things they learnt from us.”

The registration process, the biometric verification, the Permanent Voter Cards (PVC) “are things we have already gone through and suffered some challenges so I can understand that they will have some kind of improvement over ours,” he noted.

Kofi Adams cited that in the 2012 general elections in Ghana some of the biometric card readers failed to function due to battery challenges something Nigeria picked lessons from.

Nigeria’s elections, he said, have greatly improved over the years considering the fact that some years ago, results were declared in areas where no elections were held.

Incumbent president, Goodluck Jonathan, the NDC National Organiser added deserves some commendation for conceding defeat and that “his call to president-elect Gen Buhari was very timely [and] very important.”

Source: myjoyonline.com.