EC BOSS UNDER FIRE

The Electoral Commission’s (EC’s) outright rejection of the nomination forms of 13 personalities who wanted to contest in the December 7 presidential election is causing uneasy calm in the country.Almost all the affected aspirants are accusing the EC Chairperson, Charlotte Osei, of unjustifiably ‘dashing’ their respective hopes of becoming a president in 2017.The commission on Monday closed the filing of nominations by narrowing down the number of presidential candidates from 17 to four.Those cleared to contest include incumbent President John Dramani Mahama of the National Democratic Congress (NDC); his main contender, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, New PatrioticParty (NPP); Ivor Kobina Greenstreet, Convention People’s Party (CPP) and an Independent candidate, Jacob Osei Yeboah.The Fight BackHowever, most of the affected candidates have been fighting back, with some threatening to place injunction on the entire general election if the EC does not rescind its decision.Angry supporters of the PPP thronged the party’s headquarters in Asylum Down, Accra, yesterday, protesting the rejection of their flagbearer Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom.Bus-loads of supporters claiming to have come from various constituencies, led by popular Kumawood actor, Abraham Kofi Essuman Davis aka Salinko, were clad in the red and white colours ofthe party and chanted various songs to vent their spleens on the EC.Ayariga UnrepentantImmediately the EC announced therejection of the nomination of some of the aspirants, Hassan Ayariga of the Action Congress Party (ACP) unleashed verbal tirade against Ms. Osei.Yesterday, he was unapologetic, in spite of calls for him to withdraw his vituperative statements and insisted he did not ‘feel sorry’ for the EC boss.He told Kasapa FM in Accra that “The EC gave me a voter’s ID card and the same voter’s ID card is what I used to fill my forms and then you come back to tell Ghanaians that I did not put enough documents to prove my identification; what do you expect me to call that person?”He queried, “Where was the EC chair when I was contesting the 2012 elections? You didn’t know that Hassan Ayariga was a presidential candidate of PNC and a Ghanaian of course, that today you’re doubting my identification?”PNC Blame GameThe PNC preferred to apportion theblame on some of its own national executives whose ‘actions’ and ‘inactions’ led to the rejection of Dr.Edward Nasigri Mahama, the party’s standard bearer.PNC Director of Communications, Emmanuel Wilson, specifically blamed the party’s General Secretary, Atik Mohammed and theNational Chairman Bernard Mornah, for the EC’s decision.“The General Secretary did not do his work well. What this means is that he did not attach the seriousness that needed to be attached to the filling of the nomination forms…I’m sure that if we had gotten just a little bit of a competent General Secretary who was supposed to ensure that administrative work is done well, we would not have found ourselves in this mess.”“If EC had disqualified us on any other grounds, this would have been a bit understandable and reasonable. But for EC to tell us that we did not file or fill our documents per the guidelines given us, it simply means that we did not take this training so seriously. It simply means that as anational political party, we decided not to go by the seriousness we have been attaching over the previous years to this election.”