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Even if national chairmen of political parties are made co-chairs of the Electoral Commission, the election management body will still be accused of bias in electoral matters, therefore, current Chair, Mrs Charlotte Osei, should be allowed to work, Sulemana Braimah, Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) has said.

Ghana’s Electoral Commission has been under heavy criticism from opposition parties, who think the electoral body, and, for that matter, Mrs Osei are doing the bidding of the governing party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

The EC was recently sued at the Supreme Court over the credibility of the register of voters. Accordingly, the apex court ordered the commission to take steps to clean the register by deleting names of persons, who registered using the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) card as proof of citizenship, and allow them to re-register using appropriate means of identification.

After the orders by the Supreme Court, the EC announced that it has taken steps to implement the directives ahead of this year’s presidential and parliamentary elections. But pressure is being mounted on the EC to implement the orders quickly.

Kwame Jantuah, a member of the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) on Saturday said: “Now that the Supreme Court has clarified, the EC should go ahead and execute this thing as quickly as possible. If it so happens that Parliament passes the law that we are holding the elections on November 7, we don’t want the EC to be the one that delays us.”

The President of policy think tank, IMANI Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe also asked the EC not to delay in deleting the names of 56,000 people, who used the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) card as proof of citizenship to register prior to the 2012 elections.

But Mr Braimah, in a Facebook post on Monday July 11, said: “I have the impression that for some people, the EC will be doing a fair, unbiased, credible job only when it complies with everything they request it to do. The Chairperson of the EC must say ‘Yes Sir’ to every demand they make; and she must catch a cold when they sneeze. That cannot be. Even if we agree to make the Chairmen of political parties, co-chairs of the EC; make General Secretaries Commissioners of the EC, they will still accuse each other of bias. LET'S ALLOW OUR INSTITUTIONS TO WORK.”