As agitations build up against what is feared to be attempts by some officials at the Electoral Commission to go every length to ensure that the contract for the controversial.
Electronic transmission of results of the December polls is given to Scytl, a Spanish e-elections company, the Statesman has picked up another worrying intelligence that deepens fears about the alleged plot to tamper with the results.
The Statesman can confirm that Scytl has signed a contract with K-Net which will see results of the elections being transmitted through the VSAT system owned and controlled by the Ghanaian company with strong links with the ruling party.
When the EC placed an Expression of Interest advert in the dailies on March 2, 2016, 16 companies responded; five of them were shortlisted. They were InfoTrend, BSystems/Computer Foundation, Persol Systems, Scytl and Smartmatic.
According to Tuesday's New Crusading Guide, three of the companies eventually submitted bids and are expected to be demonstrating the efficacy of their respective solutions between today and Friday.
However, unconfirmed information picked up by your reliable Daily Statesman suggests that the only fully Ghanaian owned company among the three, Persol, has been disqualified after being shortlisted.
This paves the way for the two wholly-foreign-owned companies that are said to be favoured by two powerful blocks within the EC, Smartmatic and Scytl.
Scytl appears to be a furlong or two ahead of its Dutch counterpart, Smartmatic, because of its strategic partnership with K-Net.
Information available to the Daily Statesman indicates that what is influencing the alleged decision to award the transmission contract to the Spanish company, at all cost, is because its local partner, K-Net Limited, has close ties with the NDC.
K-Net’s owner is a known member and financier of the governing National Democratic Congress. The ICT firm’s chairman, Richard Hlomador, is also known to be a long-time close friend of EC boss, Charlotte Osei.
K-Net is said to be a reliable partner of the NDC when it comes to the provision of IT solutions for the activities of the governing party.
The company is currently executing a contract for the National Communications Authority in respect of the digital migration project. It is K-Net that is also in charge of the operation of Multi-TV digital box.
Our intelligence suggests that the NDC is even seeking to use the VSAT services provided by the same K-Net to enable it tabulate its own parallel results of the polls speedily.
Using VSAT is also seen as tactical with concerns that mobile network connectivity may be disturbed on Election Day, December 7
No comments:
Post a Comment