Bongiwe Zihlangu
MASERU — Former premier Pakalitha Mosisili arrived yesterday to a hero’s welcome by his main opposition Democratic Congress (DC) party supporters after a two-week working visit to Ghana to observe the country’s December 7 poll.
Mosisili headed a 13-member Commonwealth Observer Mission for Ghana’s presidential and parliamentary elections.
Mosisili, who relinquished power to Prime Minister Thomas Thabane’s coalition government in June, headed straight to a car wash fund-raising event organised by his party’s executive committee where he briefed supporters about his trip.
Mosisili admitted that observing the Ghana elections was an eye-opener in that unlike here in Lesotho “those people take elections seriously”.
“The difference between us and Ghanaians is that they take elections seriously. They understand that heading for the polls is like choosing between life and death,” Mosisili said.
According to the former premier, of Ghana’s population of 26 million people, over 14 million registered to vote while those who actually cast their ballots were “close to 12 million”.
“Those who voted were close to 12 million or almost eighty percent of the total number of registered voters,” Mosisili said.
Mosisili added that in an attempt to achieve a clean voter register, Ghana had “started the registration of voters from scratch”.
“This was to avoid the persistent belief in the existence of ghost voters and to bar voters from registering and voting more than once,” Mosisili said.
Mosisili said Ghana introduced a new biometric voter registration system.
“When one registers under this new system, all fingerprints from their 10 fingers and images are captured. Thereafter an ID is produced with all that information,” Mosisili said.
“On polling day, voters are expected to vote at centres where they registered. The ID is then scanned to ascertain before one casts their vote, that the information on the ID tallies with the one captured initially.”
In the event that the information on the ID contradicts with the one in the machine, then people are turned away from voting.
“Their motto was no verification, no voting. In my honest opinion, for one to be turned away from voting at the last stage was rather harsh to me,” Mosisili said.
Mosisili said party leaders seemed to be annoyed with people being turned away and wanted to propose that “the machines be done away with”.
“But, the Electoral Commission of Ghana (ECG) refused on the basis that the political leaders were the ones who insisted that the machines be bought,” Mosisili said.
“In as much as they have invested a lot of money in this election, they can still learn a lot from us.”
However, the DC leader was quick to add that Zambia’s director of elections who was also in Ghana, told him that the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) had already sent a delegation to her country to “assess how the system works”.
“I’m sure this is purely because Lesotho wants to emulate Zambia, which is very good,” Mosisili said.
Mosisili added that at all Ghanaian polling stations, voting was conducted outside.
“What I’ve noticed to be unique about Ghana is that, unlike here in Lesotho where we conduct voting in halls and classrooms, Ghanaians cast the ballot outside,” Mosisili said.
“I observed that at all the polling stations I visited and my colleagues also made similar observations.”
Mosisili added that he noticed that there was a “minimal role of women in elections”.
Of the more than 1 300 candidates vying for Ghana’s 275 parliamentary seats, Mosisili said, less than 10 percent were women.
“Of the 275 parliamentary seats up for grabs, only 29 women made it into parliament,” Mosisili said.
“We have in our reports criticised that and encouraged Ghana to work towards improving the status of women in politics.”
On a lighter note, Mosisili said he attended political rallies of the two main political parties, National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Front (NPP) but was bored to the core because “those people can’t sing and dance like you do in Lesotho”.
“That is one thing we can teach Ghanaians, to create vibrant political rallies. Even observers who I met in Ghana who were here in May said they’d never seen anything more beautiful,” Mosisili said.