The National Democratic Congress, NDC has given ten (10) reasons why they maintain the 2020 general election was poorly conducted and manipulated.
The NDC today 20th May, 2021 in a press conference noted that the Jean Mensah-led Electoral commission supervised over “one of the most poorly conducted, flawed and manipulated elections in the history of the country”.
The NDC’s director of elections Elvis Afriyie Ankrah stated that the situation has “undermined the strides we have made since the inception of this 4th republican democratic dispensation”.
The NDC pointed to the following reasons, firstly “the dubious handling of the printing and distribution of ballot papers and other electoral materials that led to ballot stuffing by the NPP in their strongholds and other regions”.
They pointed to “the unprecedented number of rejected ballots recorded in the elections owning largely to the incompetence and recklessness of the EC in using unapproved stamp pads instead of the approved voting ink pad that we have used in previous elections”.
Thirdly “the use of illegal statement of polls/pink sheets (form 8B) that omitted BVD enteries in about 7,581 polling stations, thereby undermining the ballot accounting process and the integrity of the entire results. This totally belies the claim by Jean Mensah that only 11,000 people voted by manual verification in the 2020 general elections”.
Number four on the list is “widespread cases of patent arithmetic errors on the face of pink sheets and constituency results summary sheets by incompetent EC staff in the filling of electoral forms and aggregation of valid votes”.
The fifth reason is “manipulation of figures by the EC leading to a display between constituency collated results aggregate (13,118,640) and regional collated results aggregate (13,119,460)”.
Sixth is “padding of votes at the constituency collation centers in favor of candidate Akufo-Addo”.
Seventh reason is “No proper collation at the national collation center by the Returning Officer for the presidential elections, Mrs. Jean Adukuwei Mensah”.
Eighth reason is the “unprecedented cases of state-sponsored violence and killings at constituency collation centers occasioned by the reckless and unlawful conduct of some EC officials and the despotic Akufo-Addo government and in contravention of our time-tested election security arrangement”.
On number nine the NDC said “contrary to the claim that the international community has hailed the conduct of the 2020 general elections as Jean Mensah will have us believe, the European Union is on record to have decried the non-transparency of the collation process for the elections. So flawed was the conduct of the 2020 general elections that for the first time in the history of this country, a whole district made up of the Satrokofi, Akpafu, Likpe, and Lolobi (SALL) communities were deliberately disenfranchised by the EC for the sole purpose of assisting the New Patriotic Party parliamentary candidate, John Peter Amewu win the Hohoe seat. Is this what Jean Mensah and her bias Commission is inviting us to celebrate?”
Lastly on the list is “the claim by the EC that an amount of $90 million was saved in the conduct of the 2020 general elections is completely contrived. The facts show that the state incurred avoidable financial losses as a result of the procurement of a facial recognition technology by the EC that turned out as a fiasco. It is therefore ridiculous and laughable to say the least, that an Electoral Management Body that has failed to pay its temporary staff their allowance five (5) months after an election will make the claim that they have saved the nation money. We wish to entreat the public to treat this baseless claim with the contempt it deserves and wait for a credible audit into the EC’s expenditure for the 2020 general elections”.
The NDC however categorically proposed the Electoral Commission must first and most importantly reform itself.
Filed By: Agaatorne Douglas Asaah/awaknewsroom.com
