General Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr. Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, says Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC), Madam Jean Adukwei Mensah has refused to meet with the Ghana Peace Council to resolve the mistrust between stakeholders of the country’s electoral process.
The said meeting, he says, was called because it has been identified that the growing mistrust between the EC and the Political Parties, especially the NDC could pose a serious challenge to Ghana’s peace and security in the next elections in 2024.
The Mistrust that has ensued, Mr Asiedu Nketiah explains, is because the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) has become ineffective under Jean Mensah.
“IPAC is not a proper forum any longer. It ceased to be the IPAC under Charlotte Osei, the IPAC under Afari-Gyan. It’s now Jean Mensah’s IPAC and Jean Mensah has decided that IPAC should be a means of just electoral commission informing parties what they have decided to do”, he said on Class FM on Tuesday.
He added that “when the afro barometer survey findings came out and the national security strategy document also identified this mistrust, there are institutions in this country which have taken it upon themselves to try and do something”.
‘One key institution which has the mandate to make peace in this country is the Ghana Peace Council. They wrote to us to meet to discuss with the electoral commission with the hope that IPAC will return to its original mandate”. He explained.
He says the NDC met with the Peace Council and laid bare their grievances with the EC to them, adding that the council indicated to them that they were going to hold a series of meetings with stakeholders in the election to resolve the lingering mistrust.
The Peace Council, he says, has since met with the leadership of both the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the NDC.
The next stage of the stakeholder engagements, he says, was for the Peace Council to meet with the EC, but Jean Mensah has refused to meet them for any discussion on the impending elections in 2024.
