NPP Supreme Court EC Declaration Challenge

NPP Supreme Court EC Declaration Challenge: History Will Judge Judges Hearing Case

By Kofi Thompson

One hopes that there is no truth in reports carried in sections of the Ghanaian media, that the New Patriotic Party's (NPP) general secretary, Kojo Owusu-Afriyie, had said his party would make Ghana ungovernable - were his party's leaders to be arrested, as rumours he had heard, had it.

It would be most unfortunate if it turned out to be true that the general secretary of a political party seeking to govern Ghana, actually made any such statement.

Surely, no politician in his right mind would make such a statement in a democratic and peaceful nation such as Ghana?

In case it escapes politicians of that ilk, the vast majority of the ordinary people of Ghana have moved on with their lives - having got elections described by all the independent observers who witnessed it as free and fair, out of the way.

Ordinary Ghanaians are not about to allow the personal ambitions of power-hungry politicians, to let their country descend into chaos.

In any case, as they head for the Supreme Court, how are Ghanaians to know that such individuals will not commit perjury by lying and manufacturing evidence, in order to facilitate the manipulation of the judicial system, to enable them achieve their power-at-all-costs goal?

There are many independent-minded, discerning and patriotic individuals in Ghana, who observed the counting of ballots after voting closed on both days that voting took place.

They are lost as to how any political party could have rigged such a transparent process, and at which stage the said rigging occurred.

Did the victors bribe all the 26,000 or so NPP polling agents, perchance? Is it not risking the alienation of those idealistic individuals who volunteered to do that difficult, tiring and thankless job of party polling-agent?

Dr. Afari Djan, the Electoral Commissioner's emphatic dismissal of the NPP's rigging claims as "false", pours yet more cold water on those claims.

As evidenced by the normalcy we are witnessing countrywide after the polls as Ghanaians go about their everyday lives, it would appear that in this most unedifying of affairs, many discerning and independent-minded Ghanaians would rather take the word of the highly-regarded Electoral Commissioner, Dr. Afari-Djan, than that of politicians - amongst whose working tools are insincerity and truth-stretching - who insist that vote-counting that millions watched with eagle eyes across the nation, was somehow affected by sleight of hand manipulation by their political opponents.

Well, Ghanaians await the verdict of the Supreme Court. One hopes that the judges who sit on the case brought by the NPP, will remember that history will also judge them - and be impartial and principled. A word to the wise...

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