EVEN BEFORE Ghana goes to the polls in 2016 for the Presidential and Parliamentary elections, the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) has started sounding the alarm bell over the control and management of the Information Technology (IT) Department of the Electoral Commission (EC).
The Israeli-based IT firm, STL Group Limited, whose association with the EC almost plunged the country into chaos during the 2012 elections, has once been fingered in the affairs of the country’s electoral body.
The Member of Parliament for Bantama in Kumasi, Hon. Henry Kwabena Kokofu, has stated emphatically that the Israeli-based firm is now in charge of the EC IT Department and has been operating from their head office in Dzorwulu.
The NPP Legislator alleges that the main EC Department is virtually a white elephant and the staff operating at the department has been rendered useless by the long hands of the STL.
According to Hon. Kokofu, the strong presence of the STL in the management of EC’s IT Department is largely being influenced by the appointment of the former Head of Department of the election body, Mr. Hubert Akomeah, as a consultant for the STL.
Hon. Kokofu alleges that the current Head of the IT Department at the EC, Mr. Tony Amazekey, is indisposed and as a result had become ineffective.
Attempt made by The Chronicle to get the official reaction from the EC proved futile, as the public Affair Director, Christian Parry, who has developed the habit of not picking calls from The Chronicle, again failed to answer his phone.
The NPP MP further contended that the rest of the staff at the department have also been sidelined in the activities of the EC, paving the way for the STL Group to take control of the computation and assessment of figures at the Commission.
“Mr. Tony Amazekey is virtually ineffective, he cannot do anything because he is very sick and all the guys at the IT Department have also been sidelined, so now STL is manipulating things from their office at Dzorwulu,” Hon. Kokofu alleged in an interview with The Chronicle.
The NPP MP, therefore, warned that the integrity of the 2016 general elections could be highly compromised if the anomaly is not corrected in time.
He is further calling on Civil Society Organizations, Religious Bodies and all interested bodies to put pressure on the EC to come clean with the contractual agreement between them and the Israeli IT firm in order to avoid any unforeseen circumstances.
STL -EC PARTNERSHIP
The Electoral Commission entered into a partnership with the STL and its partners HSB and Genkey in 2011 to undertake the biometric registration of voters, prior to the 2012 elections, in what some activists of the opposition and other interested companies described at the time as outrageous.
The selection of STL and its partners to undertake the project came as a surprise considering the fact that they were not part of the companies that applied for the job.
An application filed by the Intelligent Card Productions Systems (ICPS), a company which was also interested in securing the contract against the EC was overthrown by the court.
The opposition NPP later raised concerns at the initial stage at the posture of EC in awarding a contract to a company which was not part of the 47 companies that sent their bids for the process ahead of the elections.
In the heat of the 2012 elections, some group of NPP supporters besiege the premise of STL at Dzorwulu, led by the now National Youth Organizer of the NPP, Sammy Awuku, to protest against an alleged manipulation of electoral figures by the IT firm.
It took the intervention of the former President of Nigeria, His Excellency Olusegun Obasanjo, who led the AU Observer Mission, to clam tension and avoid what would have been an electoral disaster.
The Chronicle/African Eye News
