Wednesday, January 09, 2013

EC RESPONDS TO NPP


Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, Electoral Commission Chairman

Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Wednesday January 9, 2013.
The Electoral Commission (EC) has filed a defence to contest the allegation leveled against it by the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) that it ‘fixed’ the December 7 and 8, 2012 general elections in favour of the ruling national Democratic Congress (NDC) whose candidate John Dramani Mahama was sworn in as President on Monday.

The NPP filed a writ at the Supreme Court claiming that EC Chairman, Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan on December 10, 2012 called the results for President Mahama in spite of its claims that the EC needed to investigate alleged manipulation of figures before the declaration of the results.

Responding to the NPP’s claims, second respondent EC, who filed their application on January 7, through their lawyers Lynes Quarshie-Idun & Co and copied to Akufo-Addo, Prempeh & Co, lawyers for the petitioners and Tony Lithur of Lithur Brew & Co, lawyer for President Mahama denied the petitioner’s allegation that the offices of Superlock Technologies (STL) was used to transmit results during the election.

The affidavit sworn to by Kwadwo Sarfo-Kantanka, a deputy Commissioner of EC averred that rather STL was just a company that won the contract to supply the commission with Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSATs) where registration data could be sent from registration centres to the head office.

The EC averred further that election results were transmitted directly to the strong room of the commission from its own collation centres.

It said the representatives of the contesting parties were given copies of the result sheets at the collation centres.

In the defence, the EC said that the total number of registered voters copies of which were forwarded to the parties was 14, 031, 680 and added that figure14, 158, 890 used to declare the results was a ‘geniune’ error but that had no bearing on the results declared.

The commission said it rather affected the voter turnout by increasing it to 80.15 percent from79.43 percent.

The NPP’s writ has its presidential candidate Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, running mate Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia and NPP Chairman Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey as the petitioners.

President Mahama, in his personal capacity as presidential candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the EC, the body that supervised the December general elections have been cited as respondents in the suit.

The Petitioners are praying that the highest court of the land to declare that “John Dramani Mahama was not validly elected president of the Republic of Ghana.”

They also want the court to declare that “Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the 1st Petitioner herein, rather was validly elected President of the Republic of Ghana,” as well as “Consequential orders as to this court may deem fit.”

The petitioners said Nana Akufo-Addos’s votes were unlawfully reduced while John Mahama’s were illegally padded.

Per the NPP’s calculation, Nana Akufo-Addo polled 4,853,114 representing 50.28 percent with while President Mahama should have had 4,658,352 representing 48.26 percent.  

First respondent, President Mahama has entered appearance to contest the case but has not yet filed a defense.

“In this context, it is important to emphasize that this error has no bearing whatsoever on the total votes cast in the election and consequently, the valid votes contained by each candidate,” it averred.

The EC went ahead to describe the electoral process to the court, giving details about how ballots are cast through to how results are recorded and declared.

The EC is submitting that at all material times the contesting parties had agents in all the polling stations and could have asked for a recount if they cared.

The EC urged the court to reject the proposed deductions put forward by the petitioners since neither formula nor the justification for them had been presented by the petitioners nor had any indication been given by the petitioners as to how the figures were arrived at.

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