The Member of Parliament for the Tamale North Constituency, Alhassan Suhuyini says the Electoral Commissioner’s submission that her outfit did not foresee the outbreak of Covid-19 in Ghana is a surprise to him.

“First of all, I was shocked to hear her suggest that in 2020 nobody, maybe at the Commission, expected Covid and so there were no preparations as far as the activities of the Electoral Commission were concerned in dealing with a possible outbreak,” he said.

His comment comes after the EC boss, Jean Mensa, in her first address to Parliament in connection with the December polls, made an indication that the Commission did not anticipate dealing with coronavirus in 2020, hence made no plans in that regard.

“I was shocked when I heard that from her because in fact there is a reason why Covid is called Covid-19. By the later part of 2019, the world knew that this virus was not going to be contained easily so anybody who was planning or had activities in 2020 should have at least known that Covid was a possibility,” he said on JoyNews' AM Show.

The first time parliamentarian added that the country’s preparation towards the December elections coupled with the EC's inability to complete the voters’ register does not “seem like we are a matured democracy”. 

“The EC should have been prepared for Covid, and I am sure it is because the Commission was not that we have allowed our electoral process to look like we are amateurs”. 

But the incumbent MP for Sekondi Constituency, Andrew Kofi Egyapa Mercer, on the same show said the assertion is baseless.

“Almighty America, Europe, and all the advanced countries were caught off guard, and the Electoral Commission could not, in any circumstance have known in 2019 when they were drawing up their timetable, that in 2020 this global pandemic was going to occur,” he said.  

According to him, “If you check the records, you would notice that in 2012 when the biometric register was done, as at the time that we were filling our nominations, the final register was not ready”.

“So to suggest that someone’s behaviour is amateurish because we’ve registered over and over again and so because of that, incidents like this is happening today, when in fact, it is clear that when new registers are compiled it takes a little bit of time for it to be finalised, I really do not see what the issues of our friends in the NDC is,” Egyapa Mercer added.