Almost a month after going to the polls to elect their regional executives, members of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) in the Ashanti region are yet to know when their officers will take office.

This is because a sore loser in the chairmanship position petitioned the national Election Committee to complain of an irregularity that was approved by her own agents and the Returning Officer in the election.

It should be stated that out of the four positions at the regional level, only that of the chairman was contested and the rest went unopposed and it was a closely contested one, which was won by Mr Domfeh of the Multimedia Group Limited by one vote.

Petition:
Following the petition by Georgina Ankumah, the loser in the election, the Election Committee decided to put on hold the swearing-in ceremony of the chairman-elect of the Ashanti region.

Re-run:
The Election Disputes Adjudicating Committee(EDAC) chaired by Zakaria Tanko, came out with its recommendation and called for a rerun of the regional election in the Ashanti Region because it believed that it was fraught with some irregularities.

The Committee said one voter who was registered to vote in Accra voted in the Ashanti Region and due to the margin, it believed there should be a rerun.

The committee also noted that there were some irregularities and non-adherence to the rules of the association in the culmination of a supplementary list and "further more a voter who was registered to vote in Greater Accra Region was nonetheless allowed to cast her ballot Ashanti Region.

“Given that the extremely narrow margin of victory-merely one vote-it is a reasonable proposition that these irregularities could have impacted the outcome.”

Irony:
This conclusion and recommendation of the EDAC is quite unfortunate and questionable, particularly when there are more people who, going by EDAC, were allowed to vote in the region although their names appeared on different lists.

One can cite Justice Isaac Bediako of EIB media, whose name appeared on the Ahafo list although he has spent his entire working life in the Ashanti Region.

There is also Yaw Boadu Ayeboafoh, a former National Media Commission Chairman who spent his working life in Accra but is currently living in Kumasi.

These aforementioned names were all allowed to vote in the regional elections.

The agents of the two candidates, the returning officer of the Electoral Commission, E. T Donkor and the representative of the Election Committee in the region, Thomas Nsowah approved of them.

It is therefore very surprising that EDAC would recommend a rerun when all parties concerned agreed to allow the so-called unqualified voters to cast their ballots and now turn around to contest the result because it did not go their way.

In any case, is EDAC telling us that the vote by that one voter was the ballot that made the difference and were the perceived or real irregularities the fault of Kofi Adu Domfeh or the mother association?

Definitely, it could not be caused by the contestants and if they were the fault of GJA why should Mr Domfeh be made to suffer the brunt?

Dead silence:
It should be noted that the recommendation of EDAC is just advice to the election committee, which should come out with a decision on whether it upholds the recommendation of EDAC or not.

This dead silence seems to lend credence to the perception that there is a clandestine machination by some elements within the national executive of the association to impose their favourite on the region.

However, EDAC seemed oblivious to the vote-buying antics displayed by the petitioner on the voting day.

This is an issue that could be discussed in another forum and even the National executives are guilty of it.

Indictments:
Ashanti Region was not the only region that had a supplementary list for the June 30 polls and to allow the EDAC recommendations to stand will be an indictment on the Election Committee and the GJA as a whole.

It is a clear affirmation that the entire election was fraught with irregularities and the rerun should be for the entire election and not just one region.

Meanwhile, the candidate the association is trying to impose on the members of the region has a questionable character and the national executive is aware of this and is still bent on ensuring that she becomes the regional Chairperson.

It should not be said that national Executive of GJA support members with questionable characters to lead to the association.

There are members in the region who are ready to testify that the said candidate collected dues from them but never accounted for them.

It is clear that EDAC made of people of repute made a bad recommendation or adjudication because one is tempted to believe that it tried to please a constituency within the national body.

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Written by Michael Ofosu-Afriyie, Media Consultant.