The Judicial commission of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, KNUST SRC has ruled for fresh SRC elections.
They have accused the dean of student, Dr. Kofi Owusu Daako of interfering in their elections held on the 24th April, 2014.
Students of the University hall, Katanga and the Unity hall, Conti jointly demonstrated last Friday to protest against the alleged interference.
Unlike previous elections, the Students’ Representative Council introduced an electronic system of voting which many students have described as unsuccessful.
Reports say, voting started at the various centres after 10am and as at 12pm, some centres had not started voting. Again, some polling centres faced network challenges which resulted to delay in the voting process and the lights went off for about 40 minutes bringingthe whole process to a halt for some time.
The Dean of Students of KNUST, Dr. Kofi OwusuDaaku together with the SRC president, Fugah Caleb and the SRC Electoral commissioner, AttahAgyemang announced on campus radio; Focus FM that the voting time had been extended from 5pm to 8pm but stated that 11 polling centres out of the 22 polling centres will stop voting at 5 for security reasons but the remaining 9 will continue after 5 to 8 and entreated students to vote at any of the 9 polling stations stated.
The Dean later ordered electoral officers to stop the whole voting process since it was too late.
Not satisfied with the directive, the male Halls jointly protested saying many of them had been denied their votes.
Vice Chancellor of KNUST, Prof. William Otoo Elis who later addressed the agitated students lashed them for not using the right approach for the demonstration and encouraged them to use the courts as the first option.
The SRC Judicial commission ruled on the petition sent in by the aggrieved parties that there should be a reelection after the Electoral Commission’s lawyers agreed that the election process was interrupted and the independence of the commission compromised.
The SRC parliamentary council is hence expected to meet to deliberate whether the old ballot system would be used or the biometric system would be reinforced.
