Yaw Amankwa, going the E-way

5 Feb 2010
A few weeks ago, when Yaw Amankwa, the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party until last Monday granted an interview to the Chronicle there were many people, including myself, he commented that he should have come public like he did.
His problem was that Nana Akufo-Addo had addressed a meeting of selected constituency chairpersons in the region and allegedly told them that they should vote for F F Antoh as regional chairman and Jake Obestebi-Lamptey as national chairman.
Yaw Amankwa said that showed Akufo-Addo as a divisionist and not a unifier. Amoako Tuffuor, in whose house that meeting was held, responded by calling the regional chairman then as a ‘hypocrite,’ if not a diversionist.
There were many, including sympathisers of Akufo-Addo who were worried about the development. Mustapha Hamid and others were compelled to go out there and say such strategic meetings were normal in party politics. Competitive politics call for strategic meetings and consultations and secretly sharing views with like minded people, and on and on the explanations went.
My comments were that what was news about it was the fact that it had been made news at all - by the decision to disclose the meeting. It was probably a political calculation to win sympathy and to hurt one camp in this NPP turf war. But was it wise?
What Yaw Amankwa’s interview did was to tell the whole country that yes, Nana Akufo-Addo, was supporting other candidates for the regional and national chairmanship positions. So, who then were supporting the others? People the n drew conclusions or were helped to do just that.
Even before the polls were cast in Kumasi, the news out there was that Alan Kyeremanten was behind Yaw Amankwa and Nana behind Antoh.
Thus, by Tuesday, the real damage from Amankwa’s decision to go public was clear for all to see. Rather than giving credit for the victories to the individual candidates, the news was all about who between Alan and Nana won. Alan has suffered an unnecessary amount of collateral damage from what Amankwa did. But, it is far from fatal. A week can be a long time in politics if you have sustaining power.
That is why it is important to keep certain things away from the public in politics even if the itch to go public is excruciating.
But let me go to a programme that must be so dear to us all.
On Monday and Tuesday, the Danquah Institute, with support from others, will hold a 2-day seminar on the introduction of election automation technology to Ghana.
The Eastern Regional Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr Alecs Agobo, in February 2009, at an EC-sponsored programme, called for ways of empowering security personnel deployed at polling stations to enable them enforce the right process at those stations.

He alleged multiple voting on the islands in the Afram Plains under the watch of a duty security man, who he said was helpless because he was alone and threatened not to intervene, else he would be drowned in the Volta Lake.

Mr Julius Debrah, Eastern Regional Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), went even further. He called for the introduction of electronic voting system in the country to help avoid the issue of double registration.

Our conference next week is part of the responses to these issues. We aim to interrogate the viability of Electronic Voting and the challenges and advantages of a biometric voter register in Ghana for the 2012 general elections and beyond. It will be the first of Danquah Institute’s Annual Governance & Development Dialogue Series and the only national platform so far devoted to this important topic.
The two-day conference takes place at the Alisa Hotels, North Ridge, Accra, Ghana, on Feb 8-9, 2010. The first day will be devoted to Biometric Voter Registration; with Day 2 probing the question whether or not e-voting could work in Ghana and if so which model(s) would suit our environment.
While, the Electoral Commission has began with work on the processes leading to a compilation of a new voter register using biometric technology, “We fear that challenges with time, logistics, funds and unresolved issues about cross-sector coordination may still frustrate the implementation process”, observes Prof Yaw Twumasi, a member of the governing board of the Danquah Institute. The conference would offer a common public platform for the various stakeholders, including the voting public, to consider all these issues.
The conference will be chaired by Prof Ken Attafuah.
The fundamental question to be addressed at the seminar is how to protect the integrity of Ghana's future elections from the point of voter registration to the moment of winner certification?
The Danquah Institute believes that as a nation, we cannot dismiss without the benefit of a full domestic enquiry the viability of electronic voting and if we are to do so then it has to be now in order to allow the nation the time and space to make the necessary preparation for future elections.
Experiences elsewhere, from Asia to the Americas, have shown that countries take the e-voting way by first undertaking a pilot project at the local authority elections level. The conference will explore this option, along with its related costs and acceptability matters.
Ghanaians witnessed how the 2008 general elections got nearly marred by a bloated voter register which helped to fuel charges of vote rigging and increased opportunities for electoral violence and vote rigging.
For Ghana, the introduction of election automated technology could be the defence weapon against, not only systemic electoral fraud, but also the explosion of electoral violence in the future, which, if not checked, could ultimately deal a fatal blow to the entire democratic experiment here in Ghana and with serious continental consequences.
This programme is being supported by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation and the World Bank, with additional sponsorship from our media partners. If you want to attend please contact Nana Attobrah on 0244928999.