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Independent financial analyst and social commentator, Sydney Casely Hayford has said the formulation of a strategic plan for the Electoral Commission was unnecessary and a waste of time and resources.

According to him the sole mandate of the Electoral Commission is to ensure a clean voters’ register and run a transparent, credible and free and fair elections.

His comment follows the launch of a five-year strategic plan by the Electoral Commission which included a new logo.

Speaking on Citi FM’s News analysis programme, The Big Issue on Saturday, Casely Hayford said “I’m not sure that if I was running the EC I would even bother myself to engage somebody to do a strategic plan.” “There is no strategy at the EC except to ensure that you have a clean voters’ register, you monitor the results very well and you declare the results on time so that people don’t agitate. What else is there? Four pillars, you don’t need anything else.”

Casely-Hayford further argued that most of the agitations in the country had to do with the voters register and not a strategic plan. “So this whole engaging some other company to come and do all of this and putting all these beautiful booklets together is a complete waste of money and time.

The bottom line of the political agitations in this country is the fact that we don’t trust the voters register because we believe there are items in there that are not validly registered.

Meanwhile, the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission while launching the strategic plan said it will help the commission to rebrand. According to her, the commission’s last strategic plan expired in 2009 hence the need for a new one.