The departure of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea and the UK on official and private visits and the resumption of Parliament on Monday are the trending stories in the Ghanaian press on Monday.
The Graphic reports that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, left Ghana on Sunday, December 13, 2020, for Cote d’Ivoire and Guinea.
As Chairperson of the Authority of Heads of State and Government of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), President Akufo-Addo is on Monday, December 14, attending the swearing-in ceremony of Alassane Ouattara, President-elect of Cote d’Ivoire, in Abidjan, and will, on Tuesday, December 15, 2020, attend the swearing-in ceremony of the President-elect of Guinea, Professor Alpha Condé.
The President will from December 15 be in London for a private visit.
He is accompanied by the First Lady, Mrs. Rebecca Akufo-Addo, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Shirley Ayorkor Botchway, and officials of the Presidency and Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
President Akufo-Addo will return to Ghana on Monday, December 21, 2020.
The newspaper says that the Electoral Commission (EC) has said no information relating to the 2020 general election has been destroyed.
It said the biometric verification devices (BVDs) had been activated for voting purposes only.
“When you’re not voting, you don’t need them to be activated,” the Deputy Commissioner of the EC in charge of Corporate Services, Dr. Bossman Eric Asare, told the Daily Graphic in an interview yesterday.
“When you deactivate, you haven’t destroyed the information,” he pointed out.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC), in a statement signed by its Director of Elections, Mr. Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, had said the party’s attention had been drawn to the fact that the EC had directed that all biometric devices used in the 2020 presidential and parliamentary elections should be deactivated.
“This directive is illegal because Regulation 47 (3) of CI 127 states: ‘The commission shall, subject to the provisions of these regulations, (a) retain for a year documents forwarded to the commission, and (b) destroy the documents after a year unless otherwise directed by a court’,” it said
It said per the law, unless otherwise directed by a court of competent jurisdiction, all records related to elections must be retained and preserved for a period of one year.
The Times reports that the Parliament will today reconvene for the final lap of the third meeting of the fourth session as it prepares to be dissolved early next month.
The meeting, which commenced on Tuesday, October 6, 2020, was suspended on Saturday, November 7, for Members of Parliament (MPs) to round-off their campaigns for the general election held on December 7.
The notice of resumption issued by the Speaker of Parliament, Professor Aaron Mike Oquaye, on November 30, said the House would resume sitting “notwithstanding anything to the contrary.”
The recall is in pursuant to Parliament’s Standing Order 6, which provides that “in all cases not provided for….Mr Speaker shall make provisions as he may deem fit.”
A statement issued by Parliament’s Director of Public Affairs, Kate Addo, urged all Members and staff of Parliament to attend upon the House timeously whilst observing all coronavirus disease (COVID-19) protocols at every given time.
The House is expected to be dissolved on the night of January 6, 2021 to make way for the composition of the eighth Parliament of the Fourth Republic.
The seventh Parliament is said to be the most successful in the history of the 4th Republic with a record number of pieces of legislation passed in its life.
GIK/APA