EC’s denial of disenfranchising SALL residents brazenly dishonest – Franklin Cudjoe

The president of IMANI Africa, Franklin Cudjoe, has described the Electoral Commission’s (EC) dismissal of having disenfranchised the people of Santrokofi, Apkafu, Lolobi and Lipke (SALL) during the 2020 parliamentary elections as brazenly dishonest.

The EC in a statement on Wednesday, May 15, responded to Franklin Cudjoe’s comments, alleging that the EC was culpable for disenfranchising SALL residents because little to nothing was done to ensure the people voted.

EC described Franklin Cudjoe’s allegations as false and urged the public to disregard them and clarified that at no point did it disenfranchise the people in the newly created Guan Constituency.

Franklin Cudjoe in a counterstatement, insisted that the inability of the SALL residents to partake in the 2020 parliamentary elections lies solely at the doorstep of the EC because “it is a matter of public record that in the evening of 6th December 2020, the Electoral Commission issued a public statement to the effect that voters in the SALL Traditional areas could not vote in the Parliamentary elections scheduled for 7th December 2020.”

Franklin Cudjoe added that the EC’s December 6, 2020 statement that excluded “voters in the SALL Traditional Areas from voting in the election for a Member of Parliament was a flagrant violation of the right to vote of the said voters, which amounts to being disenfranchised.”

“The exclusion of voters in the SALL Traditional Areas from voting in the election for a Member of Parliament was a flagrant violation of the right to vote of the said voters, which amounts to being disenfranchised. As a consequence, the people of the SALL Traditional Areas do not have representation in the 8th Parliament of the 4th Republic. This has rightly been described by Prof. Kwaku Asare as “the cardinal sin” of the 8th Parliament.

“It is brazenly dishonest on the part of the Electoral Commission to refer to my statement about the people of SALL being disenfranchised as “falsehood and misinformation” or “falsehood and untruths about the Commission”. None of the so-called “facts surrounding the inability of the residents of SALL now the Guan Constituency, to vote in the 2020 Parliamentary Election” that are recited in the 14th May 2024 statement of the Electoral Commission, can take away the simple, indisputable fact that, on the eve of the 2020 elections, the Electoral Commission publicly announced that the people of SALL could not vote in the Parliamentary election.

“The people of SALL were, therefore, disenfranchised and are not represented in the 8th Parliament of the 4th Republic.”