TIME TO DEFEND CONSTITUTION AGAINST NANA AKUFO-ADDO’S LONG GAME OF ELECTION INTERFERENCE IS NOW
THE TIME TO DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION AGAINST NANA AKUFO-ADDO’S LONG GAME OF ELECTION INTERFERENCE IS NOW.
BY MARTIN A. B. K. AMIDU
Galatians 6:7-9 KJV: “7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. 8 For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. 9 And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”
We who without full knowledge of his real unconstitutional character and deceptive nature sowed William Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to become President of Ghana by our acts and deeds in the hope of defending the 1992 Constitution are reaping what we sowed through the long game of election interference he had conceived before we planted him as President of Ghana in our ignorant mockery of God. And it has come to pass that: “For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption.”
When the Lord opened my eyes to my ignorance, I started warning Ghanaians that the President intended purposefully to sow Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia as his anointed successor to be the surrogate through whom to surreptitiously achieve his third Presidential tenure despite the prohibition by the letter and the spirit of the Constitution. I saw the open abuse of the executive power by President Akufo-Addo using surrogates to head and to pack public institutions with cronies instead of professional officers designed to independently protect free, fair, and transparent election as mandated by the framers of our Constitution. The admonishing contained in my articles published on my website and in the media were ignored, particularly by members of civil society organizations (CSOs) who continued (I suppose ignorantly or selfishly or greedily) to support the unconstitutional path threaded by President Akufo-Addo to actualize his long game of election interference and handing over the reins of power only to his anointed and chosen successor poodle, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia.
I read this morning, a report on Ghana Web of Tuesday, 26 November 2024, with the heading, “CSOs call on Akufo-Addo to give assurance that the internet will not be shut down on Election Day”. I heard tongues wagging of the high probability of the internet being shut down on election day in chosen constituencies long ago, and it was refreshing to read the CSOs’ concerns on the same suspicions and their demand for assurances from the President that he will not allow it to happen. I have also read today that the EC has for the first time since the 1992 elections decided to limit the number of media outlets to be permitted into collation centres on December 7, 2024, opening the floodgate for only the preferred media to be accredited. These concerns all feed into Nana Akufo-Addo’s long game for rigging the 2024 elections for his chosen and anointed successor poodle, Dr. Mahamud Bawumia.
CSOs and the media are now beginning to cry wolf, wolf, wolf, to alert the electorate about the steps public institutions I had written about are taking which have the tendency to affect the freeness, fairness, and transparency of the 2024 elections during this election season. I had warned about the intended use of the Electoral Commission (EC) as part of Nana Addo’s long electoral game in one of my articles on 15 April 2023 headlined: Appointment of three new Electoral Commission members – We emboldened Nana Akufo-Addo to disregard the Constitution.” The electorate and civil society should go back down memory lane, and they will remember I had stated in the above article that:
“Do we as Ghanaians have a right to choose and pick which impunity and abuse of power by Governments under the Constitution to criticize, and which we should condone? I am surprised at the torrent of criticisms and condemnations directed at the President, Nana Akufo-Addo, for appointing and swearing into office three (3) new members of the Electoral Commission (EC) which will conduct all elections mandated under the Constitution and in particular the 2024 Parliamentary and Presidential elections.
Nana Akufo-Addo would not have abused the spirit of Chapter Seven (7) of the 1992 Constitution on the sanctity of the right to vote and the Electoral Commission if We the People had not in the past five and half years condoned the Government’s several abuses of power and impunity. Autocrats are empowered and emboldened by the conviction that their citizens are so cowardly or passive that they may only feebly criticize Government policies and decisions made in abuse of power and with impunity. Autocrats have come to believe that whatever opposition the electorate has against their dictatorial decisions will soon be forgotten in a few weeks of “noise making” and still return them or their chosen successors to power at the next election.”
I gave a keynote address at the University for Development Studies (UDS) 18th Harmattan School on 8 February 2024 which is published as “Keynote Address Under The Sub-theme: Citizens, Actions, Independence of State Institutions and Election 2024, Held At The University for Development Studies, Tamale, Ghana.” In that discourse, I discussed the appointment of the new Electoral Commissioner in 2018 and stated, inter alia, as follows:
“I make this point to underscore the fact that the appointment of Mrs. Linda Ofori-Kwarfo as the anti-corruption CSO representative on the OSP Board and her subsequent election by the Board as its chairperson was made possible by the rigging of the process by the foreign supported CSOs inclined to the NPP, and a suggestion I had made on the smooth working of the Board with the chairperson coming from outside the security agencies. The preponderance of the circumstantial evidence led to the credible speculation that it was through and by the orchestrations of these very foreign supported Ghanaian registered CSOs that Mrs. Jean Mensa of the IEA was nominated and appointed as the Chairperson of the EC. Two new Deputy Electoral Commissioners and a member of the EC were also nominated and appointed to add to her[29].
The foregoing also underscores how in the teeth of the constitutional oaths of office, integrity and morality are sacrificed on the altar of political expedience in the appointments to independent constitutional bodies contrary to the intentions of the framers of the 1992 Constitution.
The supervision of the 2020 Presidential and Parliamentary elections in which Mrs. Jean Mensa was the Returning Officer generated a lot of inter-political party conflict and disagreements. There are still doubts in the minds of citizens actions groups, civil society, and the electorate generally whether their votes did really count (sic) during the 2020 elections.
The last two paragraphs of the above article concluded, inter alia, as follows:
“The history of the 2016 elections underpinned by a new appointee and inexperience in election management appears to have rhymed during the 2020 elections. It may as well rhyme again at the 2024 elections unless citizens actions demand fidelity to the 1992 Constitution by the President and the EC.
The 1992 Constitution has been resilient for the past thirty years and I am optimistic that citizens actions will defend it again, against any infidelity to the Constitution that will affect a free, fair, and transparent election at the 2024 elections. May the will of the people always prevail at elections under the 1992 Constitution!”
The several articles I wrote exposed President Akufo-Addo’s intentions formed since he lost the 2008 elections to ensure that if he ever became the President of Ghana he would never allow free, fair, and transparent elections under the 1992 Constitution that enables the will of the electorate to determine his successor. My expositions have been vindicated by subsequent events including those taking place this November 2024, just a few days to the 7 December 2024 elections.
The entire membership of the EC is one of the public institutions Nana Akufo-Addo in abuse of the executive power hand picked with a placid Council of State to facilitate his election winning long game. There was no stakeholder consultation before the nominations by Nana Akufo-Addo for the appointments to the EC which is a life blood of free and fair elections under the Constitution and the warnings patriotic citizens raised were not heeded.
The Constitution does not expressly mandate stakeholder consultation, but any democrat who sincerely got rid of the old EC on the grounds of constitutional infractions and had not for a long period nursed a vindictive long game of election interference would have ensured that the next EC was constituted after a broad consultation with stakeholders and not only with his handpicked Council of State. After all, William Addo Danwka Akufo-Addo was before becoming President of Ghana perceived as the supreme defender of the fundamental human rights and freedoms of Ghanaians which is grounded on the sovereign freedom and right to free and fair elections conducted by an impartial election umpire. Nana Akufo-Addo the self and publicly acclaimed champion of democracy in Ghana over the years had no reason to fear a broad stakeholder consultation in the appointment of such a critical public institution for the supervision of elections in Ghana.
The Center for Democratic Development Ghana (CDD-Ghana) which supported the appointment of the core members of the EC in 2018 started understanding something clearly at last by urging the EC “to address long-standing issues surrounding the electoral process ahead of the 2024 elections, to safeguard its credibility.” The Executive Director of the CDD-Ghana, however, continued to remain in the paybook of Nana Akufo-Addo on the Law Reform Commission despite the glaring conflict of interest. The complicity of the EC in the disenfranchisement of the residents of the SALL appears to be one of the considerations for the alienation of Franklin Cudjoe from the diabolical intentions of the President and the EC in election management for the 2024 elections.
I read the 3news report dated 22 November 2024 stating inter alia that: “Some civil society organizations including the Centre for Conflict Resolution-Ghana (CENCOR) have criticized the electoral commission for denying them accreditation to be election observers.” The first such decision by the EC since the 1992 elections. I wondered why cockroaches like CENCOR and the like CSOs will go to the Nana Addo’s EC fowls court and expect to win accreditation as election observers to expose the EC’s likely complicity in installing Dr. Bawumia whatever the real will of the electorate might be on election day. I also read from Modern Ghana on Tuesday, 26 November 2024 that a Deputy Commissioner for the EC “... has addressed the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) after rejecting their request to observe the upcoming elections” because of:
“.... criticism from civil society organizations, including the Centre for Conflict Resolution-Ghana (CENCOR) and CDD-Ghana, which accused the EC of unfairly denying them accreditation to serve as election observers. Dr. Asare reiterated that the EC’s decisions are guided by procedures and criteria designed to ensure credible observation of the electoral process.”
The most important question that came to my mind was whether the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO), the election observer subsidiary of the CDD-Ghana, which by 31 August 2020 had trained and deployed 65 Long Term Observers (LTOs) had been offered accreditation for the 2024 elections again. The reader who does not remember should refresh his memory back to the 8 December 2020 when CODEO was the first CSO to validate the 2020 elections results for the NPP followed immediately by the CDD-Ghana urging those who disagreed with the results to use the legal process to challenge them. CODEO because of CDD-Ghana is not viewed as a cockroach like CENCOR and similar CSOs for past services rendered to the EC at the 2020 elections to be refused accreditation in the 2024 elections by the EC, which is why I asked the question to determine the sincerity of the CDD-Ghana’s intervention on behalf of CENCOR and similar CSOs. When did the cockroach ever win a case in a court of fowls?
The EC’s reason for rejecting the accreditation of some CSOs that are not subsidiaries or affiliated to CDD-Ghana on the grounds reiterated by Dr. Bossman Asare, on behalf of the EC, that “the EC’s decisions are guided by procedures and criteria designed to ensure credible observation of the electoral process” is, with the deepest respect, balderdash. The reasons giving for limiting media access to the coalition centres for the first time since 1992 are also balderdash. The electorate have just witnessed the Chief Justice of Ghana abusing her administrative discretion to empanel courts that gave the per incuriam rulings and judgment against the Speaker of Parliament knowing that nobody can have them overturned while she remains the Chief Justice.
In the 31 December Holidays case of the New Patriotic Party v Attorney-General [1993-94] 2 GLR 35, to avoid being accused of abuse of his administrative discretion, Chief Justice Philip Archer first empanelled a court of five justices presided over by the next most senior justice of the Supreme Court to deal with the application for interim injunction. The panel of five concluded that to decide the injunction will be tantamount to pronouncing on the substantive suit and referred the case to Chief Justice Archer for the expedited hearing of the substantive case on the merits. Chief Justice Archer, then empanelled nine justices of the court in order of seniority to deal with the substantive suit in which I lost the case as Deputy Attorney-General by one vote. The recent interlocutory rulings and judgment in the case of Alexander Afenyo Markin v 1. Speaker of Parliament 2. Attorney-General is proof of how the Chief Justice’s administrative discretion is abusively exercised under Nana Akufo-Addo’s regime which the EC was aware of when rejecting the accreditation of the perceived non-friendly CSOs to observe the 2024 elections. Citizens’ action under Article 3 of the 1992 Constitution is the only way to reverse the decision of the EC’s discriminatory abuse of discretionary power.
My website has articles I wrote in 2016 criticizing the EC which facilitated the right things being done that brought Nana Akufo-Addo to power at the 7 December 2016 elections. CDD-Ghana and their associates were on the side of We-the-People at that time. History is now repeating itself with Nana Akufo-Addo as the incumbent President stacking the cards to rig the 2024 elections as he planned before being elected in 2016. Ghanaian patriots defending the 1992 Constitution must rally together and not allow the EC and other public institutions appointed by Nana Akufo-Addo to be part of the election malpractice processes we fought against in 2016 to be actualized under his watch at the 7 December 2024 elections.
Before I conclude this discourse I wish to repeat what I told the audience at the 18th UDS Harmattan School on 8 February 2024: “The 1992 Constitution has been resilient for the past thirty years and I am optimistic that citizens actions will defend it again, against any infidelity to the Constitution that will affect a free, fair, and transparent election at the 2024 elections. May the will of the people always prevail at elections under the 1992 Constitution!” Let all patriotic Ghanaians and believers in democracy the world over defend the integrity of the 2024 elections against abuse of power by public institutions under the influence of President Akufo-Addo by fighting, fighting, and fighting for the accreditation of all registered CSOs and the local media in Ghana ready and willing to observe these elections. The more local CSOs election observers and unlimited media access to the coalition centres the better safeguard against rigging. Foreign election observers have their own national interests and may be influenced by geopolitics and not our Constitutional national interest. As an aside, how many local and foreign election observers has the EC rejected since 1992 to warrant this arbitrary exercise of discretion against targeted local CSOs and media?
The electorate and all patriots must let the world know that Ghanaians demand really free, fair, and transparent 2024 elections devoid of any geopolitical manipulations and support Nana Akufo-Addo has sought to cultivate during his tenure as part of his election interference long game. The deep polarization and intense emotions generated by the governance of the country under the Akufo-Addo/ Mahamudu Bawumia administration shows that the future stability of the 1992 Constitution is dependent on how free, fair, and transparent the 7 December 2024 elections are seen to have been managed and conducted by all the public institutions entrusted with supervising the elections. The time to defend the 1992 Constitution against election interference is NOW!
Martin A. B. K. Amidu
27 November 2024.