Private legal practitioner Victoria Bright has described calls for newly appointed Electoral Commission (EC) Deputy Chairperson Emelia Affi Agbenyo to resign as excessive, arguing that applying the same standard to other commissioners could require the entire Commission to step down.
Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile programme on Saturday, October 17, Ms Bright said the focus should be on improving the appointment process to ensure that the EC commands public confidence, rather than singling out one appointee for resignation.
Her comments follow a call by the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) for Ms Agbenyo to resign over concerns about her past political activities and their potential impact on public confidence in the Commission’s independence and impartiality.
Ms Bright argued that demanding Ms Agbenyo’s resignation while allowing other commissioners with perceived political affiliations to remain in office would amount to applying different standards to individuals serving on the same institution.
“I think that’s a step too far. If they are saying that, then everybody there should resign, from the EC Chair down. The EC Chair, we know, has a very strong family and political affiliation with the opposition party,” she said.
She added that other members of the Commission also had political affiliations, questioning why one individual should be singled out for resignation while others remained in office.
“So you can’t pick and choose. You can’t choose one and say resign, and this one stays and all of that. We are where we are,” she said.
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Ms Bright said the focus should instead be on addressing the weaknesses in the process for appointing members of the EC to prevent similar controversies in the future.
She maintained that previous administrations had made appointments that attracted criticism over perceived political affiliations, adding that the country needed to move beyond the recurring disagreements and consider the kind of electoral management body it wanted to establish.
She argued that the debate should not be limited to whether appointments made by one administration were acceptable while those made by another were not.
According to her, successive governments had appointed individuals perceived to be aligned with their respective political parties, making it necessary to reconsider the process rather than continue the cycle.
“Every party that has come into power has appointed its own people. So for me, we should now look beyond that and ask ourselves a very, very important question. The test for me is what kind of Electoral Commission that we want to build,” she said.
EC must inspire confidence across political divide
Ms Bright said the ultimate test should be whether the Commission could earn the trust of both major political parties and the wider Ghanaian public, particularly when its decisions did not favour their interests.
She stressed that improving the appointment process was necessary to establish an electoral body whose independence and impartiality would be accepted across the political divide.
“The test for me is whether we are building an Electoral Commission that both parties and the wider public, Ghanaians, can trust when decisions go against them,” she said.