General News of Wednesday, 16 December 2020
Source: www.ghanaweb.live
2020-12-16NDC, NPP run to court over 2020 elections
General Secretary of NPP, John Boadu
The results of the parliamentary and presidential elections as announced by the Electoral Commission has caused dissatisfaction within the two leading political parties as both parties are preparing to go to court.
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has announced its intentions to challenge the results of some constituencies in the just-ended elections.
Read full articleThe party says when it compares its collated results to the figures announced by the Electoral Commission, there are disparities.
Speaking at a press conference held on Tuesday, December 15, 2020, John Boadu, General Secretary of the NPP disclosed that the party will be seeking redress in court.
The party stressed it was opting for legal action over protest marches unlike the National Democratic Congress, which has also been protesting some election results.
“We also disputed some of the parliamentary results but we have not asked our supporters to go on the street to protest these results.”
“Our lawyers are putting our evidence to the court to protest them,” Mr. Boadu said.
The NPP General Secretary cited Banda as one of the constituencies that will be the subject of their legal action.
“We are confident that if Sene West is declared, the New Patriotic Party will add that one to our basket,” Mr. Boadu said.
Whereas the NPP is focused on disputing the results of some constituencies, the NDC is concerned with a much bigger task of collecting evidence to have the results of the presidential elections overturned.
Though the party has not clearly stated its intentions, it has more than served notice of its intentions to challenge the results after rejecting the figures announced by Jean Mensa on December 9, 2020.
The NDC flagbearer, John Dramani Mahama says it will be against his reputation as a democrat to accept the results of a flawed election.
“In my principles as a democrat, I can’t be seen to be sweeping it under the carpet and just letting it go. I think that we must bring closure to this by seeing exactly where the issues are. If an independent audit is done by the EC; they bring somebody to crunch the numbers, do an independent audit; if I lost why not [...] I’ll be the first to concede and walk away.
“But as long as that is not done, and I know that there is a deliberate attempt to subvert the will of the people in favour of the incumbent, it will be wrong for me in terms of our democratic practice to just leave it because we’ll not learn the lessons of this election. I think that we must learn the lessons of this election so that we don’t repeat it in the future one,” Mahama noted.
A day prior to this statement by John Mahama, a leading member of the party, Baba Jamal disclosed the party is in the process of gathering evidence to dispute the result of the Techiman South Constituency.
“They started with the collation and stop when the confusion started so we were unable to sign the documents but the Returning Officers said he reached out to us but we were not around. And we said fine just give us a copy of it whether we signed or not but he refused. Do you think it is with good intention we were refused documents?
“You don’t go to court empty-handed. We go with the evidence, we don’t have a summary sheet, declaration form and we don’t know what happened. How do we protest the results in court? Because we don’t have any evidence against the results?” he added.
