President of IMANI Africa, Franklin Cudjoe, has vehemently criticized the Electoral Commission (EC) for dismissing recent lapses in the District Assembly elections as mere "technical challenges."

He asserted that this explanation is disingenuous and points to deeper issues regarding the Commission's planning and transparency.

Mr. Cudjoe emphasized that the EC's earlier assurances of preparedness, provided weeks before the election, are contradictory to their claims of last-minute technical difficulties.

“This whole conversation about technical issues for the lapse the EC had cannot be true. You see if they are saying that maybe someone’s name was misspelled or something on the ballot, maybe yes. You can’t tell me that 12 hours or 6 hours to the elections, you didn’t know that you didn’t have all the accoutrement.

“These are not technical issues, they are just blatant disregard for the processes, it should have been ready two weeks earlier”.

In addition to his earlier criticism, Franklin Cudjoe further scrutinized the Electoral Commission (EC) for what he described as a "headstrong" approach and a lack of collaboration with stakeholders. He expressed the belief that excluding voices from various political parties and stakeholders contributes to avoidable problems, as evidenced by the recent District Assembly elections.

“The EC has been very headstrong…If they had internalized some of these issues, I don’t know why they would then wake up and tell us recently that in the main 2024 polls, they will close polls at 3 pm. What kind of signs went into that type of decision?

Speaking on the Big Issue, Mr Cudjoe added “Well, if you are going to have an election and this District level election is an example of some of the processes that were bungled, would you think that 3 pm should applied to every polling station? Would you want to do something like that”? he added.