Democracy is a process

E. Ablorh-Odjidja

January 10, 2013.

Election 2012 is done but the contest has been moved to the Supreme Court. And it is amazing to think how some people are reacting to this move to the court by the NPP, the opposition party.

They claim love for democracy, yet argue that it is pointless for the NPP to contest the elections at this late stage. For the sake of peace and democracy, they argue that the court contest must be stopped, accept the result and to move on.

Failing that, they say, the legal action puts our reputation as peace-loving people and the most politically advanced nation in the region at risk. And harms unnecessarily our republic.  Also, that the tension that will result from it will not promote peace.

They are, however, silent on why ignoring our Constitution will not enhance our democratic credentials.

Democracy is a process that requires constant refinement. For as long as there are substantial doubts about issues, like the outcome of elections, the process is unfinished. Thus, the Constitution will require resolve.

For the above reason, we should rejoice that we are in court and not in the streets killing each other. We should also hope that the court would fairly meet its obligation.

A cursory view of the 2012 electoral process may show the necessity for this need to go to the court for further examination.

In the 2012 elections, there was trouble with the main architecture supporting the electoral process, the biometric system.

Much was made of this biometric system before the elections, including the lavish amount spent to install it. But it failed grossly.

A system that was purposefully designed to reject unregistered voters ended up accepting 1.3 million of them. This flaw alone justifies the claim that the system failed either advertently or inadvertently.

Either way, we need to know what went wrong and fix it if our country were to maintain any semblance of democracy.

There is also the case of the absence of signatures on some critical “pink sheets”, these being essentially designed to halt or control electoral fraud.

Why appointed officials of the various parties, charged to monitor the process, did not sign on some of the finished “pink sheet” documents must be known. To allow this failure to stand will be a substantive indictment of the entire process.

In the interest of a healthy democratic system, we must know if the NPP assertions are true.

We must know from the exercise of the court if this party has a legitimate gripe and is an honest broker or the voice for mere partisan hacks aggrieved by the seeming loss of the 2012 elections.

Likewise, we must also be assertive enough to know if and what compelled the Electoral Commission (EC) to accept the unsigned sheets as valid, if NPP assertions were true.

By the same token, there is the need to let the EC know that it is not enough to have declared the winner of the elections without first offering reasonable explanation of the perceived distortions in the electoral results.

This way, we can build brick by brick what we should commonly and proudly refer to as “our democracy.”

The injection of the Supreme Court in the process is a healthy sign of our maturing democracy.  

Call the court intervention an exercise in self-cleansing of our political system, without the usual violence resorted to in other countries.  Instead of labeling the exercise a destruction of democracy, we must recognize it as an optimal point in our maturing political experience.

True, honest people were relieved by the quick declaration of the result of the 2012 elections by the EC. They were apprehensive about the violence that could have resulted had the announcement been delayed.

But the quick fix is being challenged.  That there is no violence now does not preclude it from the future. The real danger for the future lurks in the simmering present grievances; a danger that no one in his right mind should want. The upheaval in the Ivory Coast should be a reminder.

The NPP Chairman in a declaration on January 8, 2013 described the grievances:

“We will prove, just from documented evidence from the EC itself, that over 12% (1.34 million) of votes counted were in fact illegal and ought not have been included in the declared total, and that over 2/3 of this sum, numbering some 916,000, wrongly went to John Mahama for an election in which he crossed the mandatory 50% mark by less than 154,000.”

An election with a mass of over 12% of unregistered voters anywhere on earth would not be called fair and transparent.

A voting system that has this many unregistered voters, after costly investment in biometric machines, has a very serious flaw that clearly points to fraud.  The perception of fraud in the charge of abuse of citizen’s rights is an issue that a seemingly democratic system must question.

Professor S. Kwaku Asare from the US wrote recently that, “Unknown to most people, the EC followed the electoral regulations and annulled the results of some polling stations with minor verification over voting violations! Yet, in 4,900 polling stations with similar or more serious electoral infractions, the EC chose to ignore ….”

Also to note is the NPP chairman's assertion to “Consider that only 150,000 invalid Mahama votes are required to push him below 50% and therefore force a runoff, if true.  Yet nearly 6 times that amount have been identified as invalid for Mahama to date.

Fortunately, we have the Supreme Court as recourse.  If the court proceedings should prove nothing, it, at least, would have established a peaceful process for contesting elections, an educational exercise that the rest of Africa would be happy to note.

The availability of the court should be preferred to a mob with hatchets in the streets.  

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, January 10, 2013.

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