Nana Akufo-Addo and Dr Kwadwo Afari Gyan
The opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) has accused the Electoral Commission (EC) of forging the register for foreign voters.
The petitioners in the ongoing electoral fraud case, which has the EC and President John Mahama as 1st and 2nd Respondents respectively, said the list of 705 voters submitted by the Commission as Ghanaians registered in various diplomatic missions abroad to vote “was actually forged and contained several instances of multiple names and fake identities.”
The NPP presidential candidate Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo (1st petitioner), his running mate Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia (2nd petitioner) and the party’s Chairman, Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey (3rd petitioner) on Sunday filed their affidavit to pave the way for the commencement of a hearing.
The affidavit in support of the petition challenging the outcome of the December polls as declared by the EC said there were several instances of duplication of names with different voter numbers.
On Sunday the petitioners filed their affidavits with supporting evidence to enable the hearing of the case to begin on April 16.
According to the affidavit filed by Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the list of 705 names from various diplomatic missions abroad furnished by the EC contained “51 instances of repeated names to a total of 102”.
Furthermore, many of the names supplied by the EC cannot be found in the general voters’ register presented to political parties before the election.
The affidavit said “the scrutiny of some of the voter ID numbers supposedly belonging to some of these foreign registered voters could not be found on the general voters register, that is to say, they were/are fake identities.”
Again, the Supreme Court, in response to interrogatories the petitioners served on the 2nd Respondent, had ordered the EC to supply the names and other details of the people it claimed it registered abroad, namely Ghanaians working in foreign missions, Ghanaians working in certain international organizations, Ghanaian students on government scholarships abroad and soldiers returning home from peace-keeping missions abroad.
That list, according to the EC’s own earlier answer to the petition, should have been 241,524.
However, the EC was able to supply the court with a list of only 2,883 names, including the security service personnel returning home from peace keeping.
Dr Bawumia’s affidavit gave clear details of the forgery the petitioners claimed to have discovered on the list supplied.
The affidavit read: “In the list of 705 names from various diplomatic missions abroad furnished by 2nd Respondent in response to interrogatories the Petitioners served on the 2nd Respondent, there were 51 instances of repeated names to a total of 102. In all these instances but one, the two ‘identities’ had the same name, same age, same gender, same location, same assigned polling station but different voter ID numbers. In one instance, the name Abudulai Enusah Jamila, a 22-year old, also with New York as location and a male is found alongside the name Abudulai Enusah Jamila, 22-year old, also with New York location but a female. The two were assigned the same polling station but with different voter ID numbers.”
The petitioners continued: “These fake ID numbers for the multiple names also had a unique pattern. For most of them, the pattern was to add “1″ to, or subtract “1″ from the 5th digit of the ID number and subtract ‘2’ from the last digit.”
The affidavit gave details thus: “For example, one Abudul-Mumin Bashiru (No. 159 on the list) was given a voter ID number of 1852801842. This same name appeared as number 572 on the list, this time, however, with a completely different voter ID number, 1852901840.”
The affidavit also highlighted what appeared to be a deliberate attempt by the EC to hide the double entries in the 705 list by spreading the duplicate names.
“For instance, one Abdul Bassit Ibrahim was placed 11th on the list, while the same name, Abdul Bassit Ibrahim is placed 465th on the list. Similarly, while one Paul Yaw Essel was placed at No. 338 another Paul Yaw Essel was at No. 603. ”
The issue of foreign voters in the election, which had already raised a lot of doubt about the EC’s credibility, was introduced into the fray when in response to the petitioners, the EC attributed an increase of the voters’ register by 241,524 to voters it claimed to have registered abroad.
It would be recalled that in paragraph six of the EC’s original response, it stated: “In answer to paragraph 12 of the Petition, the 2nd Respondent says that the initial provisional figure it announced of registered voters was 13,917,366. After the conduct of registration of Foreign Service officials, students abroad on government scholarship, other Ghanaians working abroad in International organizations and the late registration of service personnel returning from international peacekeeping duties, it announced a figure of 14, 158,890.”
This response from Ghana’s electoral body prompted the petitioners in the case to file interrogatories demanding the EC to produce the list of the supposed 241,524 Ghanaians it registered abroad for the 2012 general elections.
However, the EC, in responding to the order of the Supreme Court, only produced a list of 705 Ghanaians it claimed to have registered in various locations abroad.
The main affidavit contained 83 paragraphs, which spelled out the case for the petitioners, supported by boxes of documentary evidence from polling stations.
In addition to the handful of affidavits filed, the petitioners submitted evidence in the form of colour photocopies of pink sheets (Statement of Poll and Declaration of Results Form) from 11,842 polling stations, where they are disputing the results as declared.
The petitioners based their case mainly on the facts and figures on the pink sheets, the official document that the Electoral Commission relied on to declare the results of the presidential poll held on December 7 and 8. They also grounded their case on clear breaches of the Constitution and other electoral laws and practices in Ghana.
Also, evidence in the form of video, audio and newspaper clippings were submitted by the petitioners on Sunday to support their case.
According to the petitioners, there were six main categories of irregularities, malpractices, violations and omissions in various combinations which affected the results of the election in the 11,842 polling stations, which had irredeemably damaged a total of 4,637,305 votes in the process, and must, therefore, be declared annulled.
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