Ghana: New EC Logo - Mahama calls criticism 'needless'

President John Mahama has virtually endorsed the yet-to-be unveiled logo of the Electoral Commission (EC), describing the heated political debate being generated as a result of the commission’s decision as ‘needless.’ “Some parties have made it a penchant to continuously attack the Electoral Commission for reasons I can’t understand. This is the time to give the EC peace to do its work. …I mean how is a logo going to affect the quality of elections in this country?” the President said on Tuesday.
Addressing members of the Council of State at their quarterly meeting, President Mahama said “I don’t think it’s a discourse that we should be splitting heads on. I think that our electoral process has inherent safeguards in it that any serious political party can ensure that it polices that election and ensure the integrity of the election.”
 
 The EC is sweating over its decision to replace the old logo of the commission with a new one that depicts foreign insignia, amid accusations that the new logo is even a plagiarised piece of work. It has emerged that the design the EC intends to use as the new logo is that of an educational and career counseling centre in Turkey.

The EC has already parried concerns regarding the new logo and has started using it on their official documents including posters and leaflets announcing the opening of registration for qualified voters. . While some have said the logo is not original, of poor quality and does not communicate the functions of the commission, others have said the timing of the introduction of the new logo is improper since the EC has more pressing issues such as the tussle over the voters register to attend to.

The President and his NDC party members are always quick to chide anybody that criticises the EC and have virtually turned themselves into unofficial spokespersons for the commission. The People’s National Convention (PNC) was the first political party to disagree with the President when its General Secretary, Atik Mohammed, told Citi FM in Accra yesterday that the EC should rather be blamed for causing the mess.

 “We cannot stop talking about it because we feel that there are a lot of things the Electoral Commission should be doing which it is not doing so if the President is asking us not to talk about it, he might as well tell the Electoral Commission to stop creating these controversies,” he stated.

 “The President’s call was rather misdirected. As a matter of fact, he should have been directing that same call to the Electoral Commission because it is they who are creating this situation and inviting everybody else to talk about it. If they themselves had decided to concentrate so much on the conduct of the election, I’m not sure the creation and launching of a new logo would have been a problem for them. But they appear to be very much interested in doing those things that would rather create controversy.