A Case of Provable Electoral Fraud

The program to set up and elaborate monitoring and collation system for the NPP was initiated by NPP-USA in reaction to an accurate diagnosis of how the NDC has been winning elections in Ghana. The NDC has always used a multi-prong approach to rigging elections, but their most reliable method has always been fudging numbers after the actual votes have been cast. Thus as we headed into the 2012 elections, NPP was ready – or so we thought.

After training all our polling station agents to be vigilant with regards to actual votes being recorded on the blue sheets at the polling station level, the NPP was largely successful in deterring wrongful recording of vote allocation. As it turned out, the NDC had other ideas. While the numbers were recorded accurately (for the most part) on the blue sheets, the EC’s polling station agents, most of whom were proven to have been “bought” by the NDC simply called in numbers that were different, to EC National.

As a result, while NPP's own tracking of returning numbers had Nana Akufo Addo in the lead by a wide margin, so called "certified" numbers coming from the constituencies and district levels had President Mahama in the lead. That is when we suspected something was not right about the reporting of actual certified numbers from the polling stations across the country.

For example, in the Parliamentary race in the Dome Kwabenya constituency, polling station numbers were changed as they were reported from the polling station level to the constituency level. After the NPP candidate Adwoa Sarfo, who had apparently lost the race, went on television to strongly protest the results, a quick check resulted in a 15,000 vote turnaround and consequently her victory. Even after that rectification had been made, the constituency officer reporting the correct results to national still reduced her numbers by 3,778.

Similar incidents of misreporting from the polling station level as well as the district levels occurred in several constituencies to make this a widespread rigging endeavor. And not a single time did such misreporting favor the NPP. So far a check of just ten constituency numbers has yielded over 60,000 votes wrongfully assigned to the NDC Presidential Candidate President Mahama.

Strangely enough, less than 24 hours after the reported gain of 60,000 votes in favor of the NPP, the police mounted a large scale raid of the center where the NPP collation is taking place. I was there when the police came in. Over 100 fully armed police and army officers raided a building adjacent to the Burkina Faso Embassy at about 6:30pm on Tuesday December 11, 2012.

We numbered roughly 35 including seven women working feverishly on laptop and desktop computers to tabulate polling station results from across the country. We were all ordered to lay flatly on the ground with what looked like AK47s pointing at us. After confiscating all our mobile phones, they allowed only one person, Ken Ofori Atta, to stand up and communicate with them. He demanded why we were being raided and they told us that they had received a tip-off that some macho men were offloading heavy boxes suspected to contain ammunitions from a truck into the building. I can report based on inside information from the very officers who participated in the raid that the raid was initiated by two “Ewe police women” who reported to their superiors that "something was going on in a building next to the Burkina Faso Embassy."

Ken Offori Atta asked if they had a warrant to search the house to which they responded that they did not have or need any to conduct the search. Next we requested that some of us accompany them as they conducted their search so that nothing is planted to justify their raid. They refused and proceeded to search the facility unaccompanied.

After a while they returned with two cutlasses and asked who brought those cutlasses there. Aside from the laughable suggestion that one private residence cannot have two cutlasses with which to weed its compound, what serious damage can any group of people cause with two cutlasses?

Meanwhile a secret recording device by one of the NPP members was able to capture one officer clutching papers suspected to be some of the blue sheets we were working with. That suspicion is supported by the fact that when after they left and we decided to hurriedly load up our materials and leave the premises, the volume of blue sheets had been significantly reduced. Further, the security forces came in with no papers whatsoever. So what papers did they take from the premises?

To set the records straight, no one could possibly had seen macho men unloading heavy boxes from a truck into the building because the only heavy things brought into the building were desktop computers, and none of them was in a box. Also these young men were tech geeks, who hardly resemble macho men. Further, the equipment were delivered in sedans and SUVs hardly the vehicles one would use to transport heavy ammunitions. And finally if this was an intelligence operation, why not send in intelligence officers to ascertain the validity of the ammunitions story before bringing in the police and army to raid the facility?

The interesting thing about this whole raid was that all the victims were expressing worry and concern not for their personal safety, but how low their dear nation had sunk into. And those who read this must bench their political affiliations and consider the kind of police state that Ghana is fast becoming. If the NDC was certain about its victory, it should welcome an exercise that would validate that victory so what would be the need to send security forces to raid and interfere with that process? And why is the NDC pressurizing the EC to contact NPP polling station agents?

On another note, why would Electoral Commission Dr. Afari Gyan abscound the country 24 hours after declaring perhaps the most questionable election results in our nation's history? Why are we all of a sudden receiving calls from EC agents with confessions and apologies on the role they played to change the numbers? Why is the entire nation brooding with no evidence of celebratory behavior? Why is the NDC leadership, including the president, according to an informant "feeling very uneasy?" And why is a section of the security forces privately encouraging us to forge ahead and not give up on our quest?

One thing is certain; unlike previous elections in which the rigging was mostly allegations, this 2012 rigging can and will be proven beyond any reasonable doubt. In defending the restoration of the people's verdict, peace as we know it may have to take a back seat if need be. The NPP will never relent.