In the wake of the postponement sine die of the purported screening of the aspirants for some executive offices of the SRC last Saturday as announced midway through the said programme by the Chairperson of the event, I consider it both inevitable and essential to state the intriguingly coincidental positions of myself and Mandela Bright Quarshie, a co-aspirant, our fervour to act on which highly threatened the same outcome for the event as the Chair would later announce.
With our intent of swerving from the road to a legal spar between ourselves and the Electoral Commission to chart one of dialogue for an amicable settlement of some strong differences regarding compliance with some crucial provisions of the electoral laws as provided for in the SRC constitution 2007 (as amended), we had requested before the start of proceedings after we had been presented with only statements of the criteria for the screening of each candidate and statements of undertaking, less than 72 hours before the commencement of the intended screening, a reschedule of the event to avert the violation of the following crucial constitutional provisions.
Article 25(3)(l) : “the Electoral Commission shall cause all candidates to sign an undertaking three (3) days before screening. Such an undertaking shall be an acceptance of the criteria stipulated in paragraph ‘h’ ”;where paragraph h as found in article 25(3)(h) stipulates: “the criteria by which every candidate shall be screened shall be published by the Electoral Commissioner at least one (1) week before screening”; and article 25(3)(g) which mandates: “the Electoral Commissioner shall publish the criteria for selecting the members of the screening committee, at least one (1) week before screening”.
The aggregate effects of these flagrant breaches would have been among others, the scandalization of the entire planned screening, rendering it a helpless prey before the monster of nullification – a hugely expensive prospect, and our needless exposure to the mockery of informed minds, whose skepticism of our willingness to defy the status quo to defend and protect the said constitution our oaths of office in the event of either’s victory would so mandate, would have easily secured an early gigantic rock of hardly controvertible basis.
It is in the light of the foregoing that I offer my heartfelt sympathies to my colleague students for the disappointment of the postponement, while urging everyone to procure consolation in the grant of another opportunity to ensure the provisions of our noble constitution are upheld by the Electoral Commission and all other stakeholders for a smooth and litigation-free SRC elections this year and beyond.
