EC Manipulated Results In NDC Favour – NPP

Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, Minority leader

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has indicated that the re-collation of the polling station votes has revealed that over 150,000 votes were added to the votes of President John Mahama in the December 7 presidential elections.

According to the party, that figure alone could have changed the course of the election which was won by President John Dramani Mahama as the Electoral Commission announced.

Addressing a rally of NPP keep fit clubs in Kumasi yesterday, ahead of its demonstration tomorrow, the Minority Leader in Parliament, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, said the manipulated figures found so far could affect the outcome of the presidential elections by taking it to a runoff or an outright win for its presidential candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu said after the initial collation, the party would engage an independent auditing team to verify the results in order to make their case stronger.

He indicated that the NPP had contracted two IT experts from Kumasi to probe the parliamentary results as well.

No Rush

The NPP has rejected the results declared by the EC serving notice on initiating a court process to overturn the EC’s verdict.
The party has finally set a date to go to the Supreme Court to challenge the declaration of President Mahama as winner of the presidential election.

At a press conference in Accra yesterday, Communications Director of the party, Nana Akomea, said, “Counting 21 days after the 9^th that you’re looking at the end of December 2012.”

The party is therefore least perturbed about the formation of a transition team and the subsequent swearing in of president-elect John Mahama January 7, 2013 when he is expected to be sworn in. barring any unforeseen glitches.

That, according to Nana Akomea, was in view of the fact that “the evidence that we are gathering is so overwhelming that we want to present the evidence in the fullest of details” because “as you keep looking at the calculations, you discover more and more irregularities, more and more abnormalities”.

He noted, “We want to gather all the evidence of the abnormalities, the irregularities in the fullest of details before we go to the Supreme Court” since “we have present evidence that will leave the court in no doubt whatsoever that they have to uphold our case”.

The NPP is said to have set up three different teams that are auditing the figures from all the 26,000 polling stations across the country all over again to ensure that its evidence was ‘rock solid and water-tight’ before proceeding to the court.

Shocking Evidence

So far, he claimed the NPP had been able to audit the results of 20,000 of the 26,000 polling stations with 6,000 left to be audited for the exercise to be complete.

Even with that, the NPP communication chief said “the results are quite shocking.”

He was confident the evidence being gathered was likely to affect the verdict of the Chairman of the EC, Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan.

The party therefore seemed the least bothered about the upcoming swearing-in of president-elect John Mahama on January 7 with the Article 64 (2) of the 1992 Constitution which states that “a declaration by the Supreme Court that the election of the President is not valid, shall be without prejudice to anything done by the President before the declaration.”

That, according to him, meant that “those transitional processes that might end up with the swearing in would have no effect at all on the decision of the Supreme Court.”

The party has resolved to abide by whatever verdict the Supreme Court comes out with and asked interested parties to do same when the ruling is finally given.

It has also asked its polling stations across the country to defy invitations being extended to them by the various district offices of the Electoral Commission to either certify (sign) new forms or submit copies in their possession.

“We don’t understand why the Electoral Commission may want to deal with our agents on an individual basis; if they have anything to do with the party in some support role, they have to approach the party properly,” he advised the elections body.

“We urge all our agents not to honour any invitation from any official of the Electoral Commission at the district level and not to have any dealings with them at all except as the party will direct.”

EC Woos NPP Agents?

The NPP had stated last Friday that regional electoral officers and some district returning officers of the Electoral Commission were contacting their polling agents to arrange meetings with them.

“The Eastern Regional electoral officer, for instance, has confirmed this to our Eastern Regional Secretary and says it is for information purposes. We have also had such reports from the Volta Region, Northern Region and other parts of the country”, a statement issued in Accra and signed by Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie, NPP General Secretary said.

“The NPP national leadership wishes to issue a directive that no polling agent or party official, at the constituency level or any other level, should respond to any instruction or request from the Electoral Commission or the NDC. Any such instruction or request must be addressed directly to the party headquarters.

“If the EC wishes to deal with the party at the regional or constituency level, such requests must be first directed to the party headquarters for the consideration,” the statement added.

EC’s Denial

However, the Electoral Commission has denied the allegations.
The EC chairman, Dr. Afari-Gyan, emphatically denied the allegations, noting, “The EC has not made any call.”

“I don’t even know who their polling agents are. We didn’t hire them! … There is no need for that,” he told Citi FM.