Kufuor wants electoral reforms

2009-01-06 08:33

Accra - Ghana's outgoing President John Kufuor congratulated his successor, opposition leader John Atta-Mills, on Monday while calling for limits on the tenure of the country's electoral commission.

In his farewell address to parliament Kufuor commended the electoral commission for its professionalism in the latest poll, but said the current system where its officials stay in office indefinitely needs to be reviewed.

"There is no doubt however that it is risky to have a referee that enjoys permanent security of tenure," he told the outgoing members of parliament.

"I therefore recommend for the consideration of this house ...a system which will retain the absolute independence of the commission, but also provide all its members with specific terms of tenure.

"This will underpin sustained public trust in the commission and also make it accountable to the people," said Kufuor, two days after his party complained that the commission dismissed its concerns over alleged voter irregularities.

Electoral commission chief Kwado Afari-Gyan was appointed in July 1993, the year after the body was set up.

Kufuor is not known to have raised the issue of electoral commission reform before now.

The outgoing president said that much as he would have liked to be succeeded by a member of his own party, as a democrat he accepted the verdict of the people of Ghana.

"I therefore congratulate once more professor Atta-Mills on his election," he told parliament.

"It stands to be hoped that he will bring the wealth of experience garnered while in government and subsequently out of it, to forge a sense of unity... which is a sine qua non of nation building."

Atta-Mills is a former vice president to Kufuor's predecessor Jerry Rawlings.

Kufuor also praised his party's candidate Nana Akufo-Addo "who has acquitted himself with valour and the greatest sense of dignity in what is perhaps the closest and most keenly contested election ever in the nation's political history".

Atta-Mills won the election in the second round by the slim margin of just 40 000 votes out of a total of some nine million ballots cast.

The handover from Kufuor to Atta-Mills will take place on January 7.

- AFP