Renowned security analyst Adam Bonaa has chastised the Electoral Commission, Ghana (EC) for neglecting a recommendation by the Emile Short Commission to make arrangement for its own security to police the polls in the country.

He said as it is now, the EC takes its security instructions from the police, which should not be so.

Speaking on The Key Points on TV3 on Saturday, October 31, the head of Security Warehouse insisted that the EC must take charge of security during elections in Ghana.

“Who is in charge of elections in this country?” he wondered. “It is the EC.”

But “increasingly, the EC has been very negligent, the EC over a period has been incompetent in terms of security,” he claimed.

Mr Bonaa said usually when there are altercations at a polling station between party agents, the police officers at post are expected to be arbiters but yet again they defer to the EC officials, who often also shirk that role.

He said this should not be as the EC must take charge of the total organisation of elections in the country.

“EC is supposed to be in charge of everything including security and so if the EC is not well educated with regard to security arrangements, with regard to what its officers should be doing [and] they don’t have their own standby security, this is what usually culminates into all-out confrontations.”

For him, the recommendations by the Ayawaso West Wuogon Commission must be taken more seriously.

“In the Emile Short Commission’s recommendations during the sitting, one of the things that came up significantly was that the EC should have its own internal security arrangement. As we speak, it hasn’t been done. I haven’t seen it.”

Ghana goes to the polls on Monday, December 7 in what will be the eighth successive elections in the Fourth Republic.