Coalition of Domestic Elections Observers (CODEO) has expressed reservations about the silence of the agencies investigating the disappearance of money from the Electoral Commission (EC)’s Endowment Fund.
According to the Coalition, it was imperative that the country’s election supervisory body was free from any issues that might raise doubts about the EC’s integrity.
EOCO commenced investigations into the activities of three officials of the EC; Georgina Opoku Amankwah, Chief Accountant, Kwaku Owusu Agyei-Larbi, and Finance Officer, Joseph Kwaku Asamoah, after over 480,000 Ghana cedis reportedly went missing, resulting in the officials being asked to proceed on leave.
However, three months since the investigations begun, it appears little progress has been made in the case.
Executive Director of CODEO, Albert Arhin, said that in order for the EC to retain public confidence, the agencies handling the investigations had to provide updates on the officials under investigation.
“CODEO is concerned about the silence of the investigations that are going on into the Commission. We have written to the President to find out whether anything has come from the Chief Justice concerning these allegations.
There’s a concern about the fact that we are going to have district assembly elections and other elections including a referendum for the creation of the new regions.
There are other assignments, so one expects the Commission to be in the preparatory stages of trying to put up a programme to cover some of these activities,” Mr Arhin said.
“The integrity of the Electoral Commission is very important. The public would have to accept that it is dealing with a Commission that is clean, a Commission that is reliable and inspires confidence.”
EOCO revealed in September that, the money which went missing from the EC’s Endowment Fund did not end up in the accounts of the officials being investigated.
They however insisted that it was too early to conclude that the officials are innocent, given the mandate and access they had to the funds during the period.
In a radio interview recently, the Executive Director of EOCO, K.K. Amoah, at the time, stated that, investigations were far advanced into the matter, and that they would submit their findings to the Attorney General very soon.
News Desk