Broadcast journalist and former board member of the National Communications Authority (NCA), Paul Adom-Otchere, has renewed his call for the government to fund election result collation infrastructure for all major political parties and the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA).
Speaking on his Good Evening Ghana programme on Metro TV on Thursday, Adom-Otchere revealed that he had previously proposed the idea during his tenure on the NCA Board, aiming to promote a more transparent and equitable electoral process.
“When I had the opportunity to sit on the NCA Board, Joe Anokye was Director-General and Kwaku Sakyi-Addo was the Chairman. I told Joe Anokye, ‘Why don’t we spend money as the government to set up a campaign, a resource-receiving system for NPP, set up a resource-receiving system for NDC, and set up another one for the Ghana Journalists Association?’” he said.
He added that he had discussed the proposal with GJA President Albert Dwumfour, stressing that such a system would ease the financial burden on media houses and ensure all parties receive election results simultaneously.
“So journalists go to the GJA—whatever GJA has is what NPP has and is what NDC has. So let’s get the Electoral Commission out of the equation by knowing that results are coming to everyone, and media houses need not spend significant amounts of money they don’t have. Money they should be using to pay journalists, they’re spending it on election coverage and IT people.”
Adom-Otchere argued that state funding for such infrastructure is crucial to upholding democratic integrity.
“The state should spend that money in favour of democracy. The state should really pay for that, and I’m very passionate about this point. The state must pay for the result collation of all relevant political parties and the Ghana Journalists Association. If it will cost 100 million, the state should pay for it,” he stressed.
He elaborated on how such a system could work in practice.
“GJA, set up your system—every election time you have the base… As soon as results are imputed in any polling station, it will show up,” he said.
Adom-Otchere concluded by acknowledging the challenges of implementing the proposal, especially within a financially constrained environment. “This is a good idea for Ghana, but it’s not easy to push these ideas in the environment that we have, where you are talking about money.”
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