The Electoral Commission has made a u-turn with a denial that its systems were hacked during the critical period of election results transmission.
Deputy Director of Communication Yusif Ayuba said while the systems suffered some breakdown it could not have been hacked into.
He was speaking to Joy News, Monday, days after the EC chair Charlotte Osei declared opposition leader Nana Akufo-Addo as president elect.
Before her declaration though, the country was left on tenterhooks as the EC went completely silent 12 hours after elections with no confirmed or provisional results.
Even when the two leading political parties were claiming victories from results of the same election, the EC was still quiet.
It was the NDC that first issued a statement claiming to be in a commanding lead and assured its supporters to remain calm.
The NPP reacted with a press conference claiming to be victors and asking the incumbent president to concede.
The NDC returned with another press conference berating the NPP for daring to ask the president to concede.
Hours after that tensed drama from the political parties, the EC chair Charlotte Osei broke her silence, not with figures from the elections but with an excuse that their systems had been compromised for which reason she could not continue with the electronic transmission of the results.
She did not explain what may have caused the compromise, except to add, they would rather rely on the manual process of results transmission.
However, the same Commission on its twitter page condemned what it said were attempted attack on the EC website.
The tweet formed the basis for many stories to be done by local and international websites.
Days after the dust has settled on the elections the Deputy Communications director said there was no attempted hack of the EC website.
“We had challenges in transmission. I wouldn’t say it was a hacking. I don’t think it was an official statement from the EC that our systems had been hacked,” he said.
Source: myjoyonline
