Politics of Thursday, 31 December 2020
Source: starrfm.com.gh
The Member of Parliament for Bolgatanga East, and member of the NDC legal team, Dr Dominic Ayine, has stated that the party has no evidence that John Dramani Mahama won the 2020 presidential elections.
The former Deputy Justice Minister in an interview on GHONE TV said the party has all times maintained that no candidate in the just ended December 7 election garnered enough votes to cross the 50 per cent margin to be declared president-elect by the Electoral Commission chairperson.
“We never said that we won the [presidential] election, if we were convinced that we won this election we would have stated that in the petition,” he said Thursday morning.
According to Dr Ayine, party members who were part of the electoral process and have had access to the evidence of vote padding in favour of president-elect Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo are the ones who have intimated that the election was stolen from Mr Mahama.
Mr Mahama who was flagbearer of the NDC in the recent election filed a petition at the Supreme Court on Wednesday to formally challenge the results which saw President Akufo-Addo attaining the Presidency.
Mr. Mahama in an address Wednesday night said: ”Some people have asked me what I hope to gain by challenging the results of this election.
“Let me tell you: I want, perhaps, the very same thing that my opponent wanted when in 2012 he challenged the results of that election; I want the removal of doubt. I want for all of us to know that our elections should be free, fair, and safe—and that we do not have to settle for a process that leaves us confused, and with more questions than answers. I want a Ghana where institutions of state can be held to account”.
He stressed: “Where we can stand on principle and demand transparency without the risk of losing our lives. When people lose their lives—as seven people did—in the course of our elections, we are moving backwards not forward; we are unravelling the very fabric of our democracy; we are risking the loss of three decades worth of progress.
“When today we see armed military and militia in our collation centres and election outcomes declared at the point of a gun, for us who have witnessed our country’s journey through all its post-independence travails, we wonder if we have truly exorcised the ghosts of our torturous past. We must continue to be a nation in which our young citizens have faith in our institutions, trust the rule of law, and rely on the presence of peace because there is justice”.