IMANI’s decade-long feud with Electoral Commission highlighted by Kofi Bentil

Vice President of IMANI Africa, Kofi Bentil, has said that the policy think tank has had issues with Ghana’s Electoral Commission (EC) for over 10 years.

He states that IMANI has been pressing on the elections management body to render accountability for their stewardship, not necessarily a change of personnel at the commission.

“We have had a longstanding feud with EC spanning about a decade. They chose to deny facts and even ridicule us when we demanded accountability of them. We even had a court order against them which they have not faithfully obeyed. We were left with no choice than to take them to CHRAJ!! We don’t care who is in power, we will stand our ground till the end. TO BE CLEAR, IMANI IS AFTER INSTITUTIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY not just change of personnel,” he wrote on his Facebook page.

His comments follow the petition they filed at the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) to investigate the Electoral Commission’s conduct in the retirement and disposal of elections-related equipment.

Bentil, also a private legal practitioner, further stated that “Imani petitioned CHRAJ before this government came in and has been on the EC case for almost a decade because a lot is wrong with the EC! I even secured a court order to force them to perform their constitutional duties, which they have ignored.”

The petition dated May 4 seeks to “invoke the jurisdictions, powers, mandates, and duties under chapters 18 and 24 of the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, which entrust the care of national resources and the charge of ensuring sound conduct among public officers to the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ/” the Commission”).”

The signatories to the petition, including Founding President, Franklin Cudjoe, Honorary Vice President, Bright Simons, Senior Vice President, Kofi Bentil and Vice President Selorm Brantie  wrote, “We are gravely concerned by the Electoral Commission (EC) of Ghana’s handling of the
nation’s scarce resources in the discharge of its duties, which conduct we believe amounts to “misappropriation”, “wastage”, and “misuse” of said resources.”

They contend that, “The EC’s conduct appears to us as evincing a conflict between its duties under various laws to judiciously apply the resources of this country for the good of the citizenry, on the one hand, and its tendency to take decisions favourable to various commercial vendors and
transactors, on the other hand.”

“Furthermore, we believe 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,” they added.