The latest salvo in the growing rift within the Electoral Commission (EC) saw the deputy Chairperson of the commission in charge of Corporate Services, Georgina Opoku Amankwah, accuse her boss, Charlotte Osei, of being unfit to head the EC.
“In my view, the chairperson rather lacks the requisite managerial skills in public administration. This needs no elucidation since the current leadership style is publicly evident,” Mrs. Amankwah stated in a 25-point response to the Council of State concerning claims of corruption and recalcitrance made against her.
The deputy EC Chairperson was countering Mrs. Osei’s claims that she lacked the managerial experience or capacity of corporate governances. Mrs. Amankwah touted her experience in the public sector, noting she had chaired the entire Ghana Trade Union Congress, which is made up of different organisations.
Arguing Mrs. Osei’s incompetence, she recalled that “the chairperson refused to attend court proceedings of litigation brought on largely by her arrogant posture and inexperienced electoral administration skills.”
Mrs. Amankwah’s accounts indicated a long-standing friction within the commission, with an assertion that Mrs. Osei “has lost favour with the staff. This has compounded her disaffection with the staff.”
She further described Mrs. Osei as having an “unbridled desire to wield power and control around herself, making commission decision less important and binding than hers.”
Responding to Mrs. Osei’s claims that she did not follow instructions, Mrs. Amankwah acknowledged the seeming rift between her and Mrs. Osei, noting that “for reasons best known to herself, I am the last person she would want to deal with in her scheme of things.”
‘Charlotte Osei wanted us out of the loop’
Mrs. Amankwah revealed that Mrs. Osei was known to convene meetings without the knowledge of her two deputies and that “on various occasions, she pathetically did so through the Director Human Resources or Director Administration without recourse to either of the deputies. Her arrogant position became more manifest after the other commission members drew her attention to the anomaly but still insisted.”
“The Chairperson upon realising that her dictatorial tendencies did not resonate with a majority of the commission members avoided the convening of Commission meetings and rather resorted to the use of directors at the blindside of their immediate bosses (the two deputies). She then became evasive and not interested in commission meetings,” Mrs. Amakwah also noted in her statement.
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