2020 'Historic' Elections Was Trasparent, Credible, Cost-effective & Calm - Jean Mensa Tells ECOWAS

Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Madam Jean Mensa Jean has asserted that the 2020 general election was credible and cost-effective.

Cost-effective

Madam Jean Mensa, at the 2021 ECOWAS Parliamentary Seminar in Winneba said the comparative cost of the election was reduced by 41% which is equivalent to 90 million dollars.

“Notwithstanding inflation and price hikes and the fact that we incurred additional costs owing to the COVID-19 protocols we deployed throughout the election, we cut the cost per voter, from 13 dollars per head in 2016 to 7 dollars per head. Through a reduction in cost, we saved the government a formidable sum of $90 million.”

“We were met with many challenges, but we surmounted most of them and those we could not overcome, we learned from. Sadly, seven lives were lost, and though these did not occur at our polling stations or arise as a result of misconduct on our part, one life lost is one too many. We are hoping that our security agencies will share their findings and recommendations for future learning,” she said.

Transparency

According to her Ghana’s 2020 elections was a historic one for the transparency, the credibility, the cost-effectiveness, the high turnout, and peaceful conduct that characterized it.

"So orderly, so methodical, so calm were the polls on 7th December 2020 that BBC Africa could find no other way to describe our elections than “boring”. We refer to them as Historic also because, we conducted all our electoral processes and elections at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, without the spread of the virus," she said.

Still in the pursuit of transparency, on voting day she said the EC introduced a new layer of scrutiny of the electoral process by introducing a regional level of collation of results.

"The Regional Collation Centres enabled Party Agents to further scrutinize, affirm and collate results from constituencies within their regions before submission to the National Collation Centre."

She said this further deepened the transparency of our elections and reduced the tension and suspicion that foment during long waits for constituency level results.

"In the past we waited for 275 Constituency results. This time, we received 16 Regional Results. This innovation introduced efficiency in the collation of results and enabled us to declare the results in a record 48 hours," she added.

She the  successes of Ghana’s 2020 elections proved that elections in our sub-region can be efficiently conducted, inspite of the odds and challenges.
Collation of results

The Chairperson of the EC said to further enhance the culture of transparency, the EC constantly engaged the public and the media in twice-weekly encounters dubbed: "Let the Citizen Know", in the run-up to the elections.

"On this platform, we provided citizens with information on on-going electoral activities and answered their questions and concerns. This helped to open up our process and demystify our work.

"Again, through this platform we provided swift responses and facts to counter fake news thereby substantially reducing the tensions and suspicions that usually arise from fake news and the lack of information," she said.

Read her full speech below