What If EC Had Delayed Announcing The Results

By Margaret Jackson

December 17, 2012

On Sunday December 9, 2012, just some few hours before the Chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC), Dr. Kwadwo Afari Djan was to announce the winner of the presidential election, something happened which delayed the announcement for hours.

The NPP folks who saw defeat starring them in the faces suddenly held a press conference with false claims that they have evidence of electoral malpractice and presented a petition to the EC. This led to a lengthy meeting between the EC officials and members of the National Peace Council of Ghana which certainly delayed the announcement of the presidential results for hours.

During the meeting the NPP stated that they have strong evidence which they want to present to the EC so they should delay announcing the results for 24 hours. They claimed that the evidence was very authentic and that they were very much done with it, therefore, if the EC delays the announcement of the results for 24 hours it will best serve the interest of the whole nation.

But at the end of the meeting it was agreed that the EC by law cannot delay announcing the results just because one party is claiming fraud. The EC and the NPCG therefore, informed the NPP folks that the results were going to be announced and that if they have any issues with it they can go to the courts to register their protest.

That was the reason why the results were finally announced on Sunday December 9 with President Mahama being declared the President-Elect much to the angst of the NPP folks.

With the NPP pleading for a 24-hour delay everybody in Ghana was very expectant that the so-called evidence they have will be produced the very next day to buttress their request for the delay of the announcement of the results.

But it’s more than a week and no evidence have yet been produced by the NPP. In fact what they have done every day after the results had been announced is to come out with false claims on how much votes they were cheated on.

Just hours after the presidential results were announced the NPP held a press conference and quoted some figures which totalled 36,000 as the votes they believed had been wrongly given to President Mahama but they did not provide any proof to back their claims.

Then on Monday December 10, a deputy Communications Director of the NPP, John Boadu came out boldly to assert that the NPP have evidence to show that in ten constituencies a total of 53,000 votes were wrongly added to that of President Mahama’s.

The NPPs electoral tricks or gimmicks peaked on Tuesday December 11, 2012 when at a rally at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle in Accra they changed the numbers of so-called votes stolen from them to over 100,000 votes.

By Friday December 14, 2012, Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie, NPPs General Secretary, also stated that the EC rigged the election in excess of one million votes for John Mahama.

But over the weekend, another drama was thrown into the whole political publicity stunts by the NPP when the NPPs Minority Leader in Parliament, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, stated at a rally in Kumasi that the NPPs findings have so far revealed that over 150, 000 votes were added to that of President Mahama in this year’s elections.

At a separate news conference addressed by the NPPs Director of Communications, Nana Akomea, he stated that the NPP had completed gathering figures from 20,000 polling centres out of 26,000 across the country, and that it is confident the party’s claims of electoral fraud would be vindicated.

This is by far the electoral numbers galore that the country is witnessing since it became independent in 1957. Never before the country’s history have we heard or seen a party giving different numbers of so-called electoral fraud every single day.

If the EC had agreed to delay announcing the results for 24 hours, to allow the NPP to present its so-called evidence on electoral fraud, the country will still be without a President-Elect more than a week after the elections were held.

The NPP would still be beating about the bush with the elephant roaming aimlessly to find the right spot after they claimed that they were going to present the evidence within 24 hours. Hey, the last time I checked it was more 192 hours and still counting but the NPP is yet to present any evidence to back their claims.

To cap it all, I guess the whole country would have been 419 (four-one-nined) if the EC had not announced the results because the NPP is just buying time to deceive the whole country and also to garner some sympathy from the electorate that they have been robbed of victory when in fact they lost hands down.

What many Ghanaians do not know is that even in some NPP strongholds many of their staunch supporters voted for President Mahama and then the NPP parliamentary candidates a situation Ghanaians normally call Skirt and Blouse. Many NPP supporters who detest Akufo-Addo voted for President Mahama because they do not want Akufo-Addo as president of the country.

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