The Ghanaian News
February 2013
41
Frankly Speaking The Rise and Fall of Kwadwo Afari-Djan, Ghana’s Electoral Commissioner By: Michael Baffoe, Winnipeg, MB
Since the end of the Kwame Nkrumah regime in 1966, the position of Electoral Commissioner has become very important. It started with the appointment of Justice V.C.R.A.C. Crabbe as the Electoral Commissioner to oversee the elections of August 1969 that ushered in the Second Republic of Ghana after the overthrow of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s CPP government. That was the first time Ghanaians were learning about this important public position. To his credit, the bearded Judge discharged himself very creditably in this position in his conduct of the 1969 elections. After 1969, Ghana’s political destiny was in the hands of reckless military adventurers who toyed with the nation’s politics for many years. One of such military adventurers was Colonel (later General) Ignatius Kutu Acheampong who seized power from the Progress Party government of Dr. Kofi Abrefa Busia in 1972. Acheampong sought to perpetuate the military in government by introducing a model called “Union Government” or “Unigov” for short. He proposed a marriage between the Armed Forces, the Police and Civilians in subsequent governments effectively doing away with any form of total civilian government. This model decried by its opponents as the “APC” (army/ police/civilian) became a very contentious national issue which was vehemently opposed by many. Kutu Acheampong ordered a referendum on this APC Unigov model which was held on 30 March 1978 to accept or reject this concept. The Electoral Commissioner at the time, Justice Isaac Kobina Abban (who later became Chief Justice), went into hiding from the government for fear
of his life after refusing to bow to the pressure of the military government to manipulate results. The government went ahead and declared its own “official” results of 60.11% for and 39.89% against which was widely believed to be rigged. The Unigov APC idea died when Acheampong was himself overthrown in a palace coup in July 1978. The two Electoral Commissioners referred to above, Justice Crabbe and Justice Abban have been the finest of Judges and Electoral Commissioners Ghana has produced. They had conscience and they stuck to the truth even on the threat to their lives. We cannot say the same or heap the same virtues of honesty on the current Electoral Commissioner, Dr. Kwadwo Afari Djan who was appointed by Jerry John Rawlings to the position in 1990 and has held the position since then. Dr. Afari Djan was my former political science professor at the University of Ghana, Legon, in 1978. He tasted the tough times in Ghana during the difficult days from the mid 1970s through the 1980s. He actually feels a real sense of gratitude and loyalty to Jerry John Rawlings and his political establishment for saving him from the extreme hardships of the period referred to above to the powerful plush position of Electoral Commissioner. He has since his appointment to the position in 1990 conducted six major
elections in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012. The 1992 and 1996 Presidential and Parliamentary elections were shamefully and openly rigged by AfariDjan in favour of his master Jerry Rawlings and the NDC. The1992 Parliamentary elections which were held first in November were so blatantly rigged that the main opposition Party, the NPP then led by history professor, the late Prof. Albert Adu Boahene boycotted the Presidential elections. The Professor later wrote a book on the elections titled, The Stolen Verdict. The conduct of those elections was so bad that at one polling station at North Kaneshie in Accra, one presidential candidate, General Erskine voted together with his wife and daughter and when the results were declared by Afari Djan, Candidate Erskine got zero votes. He was told he did not even vote for himself. By the year 2000, Dr. Afari Djan had become something of a tingod. His word reigned supreme. Because Ghanaians are timid and do not engage in electoral violence in the face of massive rigging, Afari Djan always interprets the silence after the various elections as a tacit approval of his conduct and that of his outfit. He became an international consultant on elections where he traveled around the world ostensibly to “teach” other governments, dictators and electoral commissioners tactics on stealing elections for governments in power. He could not manipulate the 2000 and 2004 electoral results in Ghana because the votes were so massive and the watchdogs were vigilant. When the NPP let their guard down in 2008 and 2012, Afari Djan was
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back at his manipulating tricks, skewing the results in favour of the NDC and its candidates. His conduct over the 2012 elections has been so shameful that he has absolutely no credibility left to carry on as the Electoral Commissioner. Before the 2012 elections Afari Djan engaged in so many questionable actions including creating 45 new constituencies only three months to the elections over the objections of all the opposition parties and wise counsel from many well-meaning Ghanaians. He ignored all wise suggestions and advice to do the right thing, believing himself to possess all the powers in Ghana to do whatever he wants, as and when he wants, as long as the Constitution allows. The NDC party and government were always supportive of his actions, offering him unflinching allegiance, knowing he was in bed with them. So much of the actions of Afari Djan and the Electoral Commission point to nothing but gargantuan fraud. Before the 2012 elections, the Electoral Commission informed all participating political parties in the 2012 elections that there were 13,917,366 registered voters. After the election, the figure had bloated to 14,158,890. Then he said as many as 241,524 Ghanaians on the voter register were supposedly registered abroad. It turned out the number was only 491. In some constituencies in the Northern, Upper and Volta regions, the number of votes casts and declared for President Mahama were in some cases more two hundred times the number of registered voters. These inconsistencies in numbers of registered voters and actual votes form the basis of the electoral challenge filed by the NPP before the
Supreme Court of Ghana. Afari Djan and his outfit have been struggling, since the NPP raised its objections to the electoral results, to justify the huge differences in numbers. He has been fumbling for words, ruffling his hair and scratching his head. He is rumoured to be making last-minute attempts to get names and addresses of Ghanaian residents abroad to dubiously use for the figures he presently finds insurmountably ominous to justify. He is foaming at the mouth, wallowing in complete ignorance, shocked at how he is about to be reduced to Mr. Nobody, but a complete clown by his own obstinacy. He is no more the tin-god and the all-powerful untouchable that he has believed himself to be all this while. As if the disgrace so far is not enough, Afari Djan has ordered his field officers to manufacture new “pink sheets” on which the electoral results were recorded in December to illegally secure evidence to facilitate the EC’s case in court against the
New Patriotic Party. The Savelugu/Nanton District Director of the Electoral Commission, Ben Akumanua and Salamatu Usman, a national service personnel at the EC, were arrested with 15 pink sheets, allegedly trying to validate the electoral results of the 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections. We understand that similar fraudulent exercises are being undertaken by the EC officials in the Northern and Volta regions to manufacture new evidence to justify their fraud in the 2012 elections. Oh! How low can a respectable person sink? It is said that he who the gods want to kill they first make mad. My humble advice to my former political science professor is that the game is up. He has brought enough shame to himself and needs to call it quits. His one-man showmanship that defies conventional wisdom has now come to a disgraceful end. And he now finds himself the most disgraced person in Ghana.
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