Politics of Saturday, 19 December 2020
NPP's Joe Anokye contradicts Electoral Commission on Techiman South votes
play videoJoseph Anokye, Director-General, National Communications Authority
Joseph Anokye, the Director-General of the National Communications Authority (NCA) cum NPP election collation IT guru has contradicted the Electoral Commission of Ghana (EC) over votes cast in the Techiman South Constituency in the presidential and the parliamentary elections.
According to him, while the party's internal collation of the Techiman South presidential results goes to the opposition candidate, John Dramani Mahama, the parliamentary results are hard to come by.
Joe Anokye told Paul Adom-Otchere's Good Evening Ghana show on Metro TV, Tuesday, December 15, that the NDC's John Dramani Mahama won with 51,403 votes against the NPP candidate President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo who had a little over 46,000 votes.
When the host asked him about the parliamentary votes, Anokye responded, "There is a big challenge with parliamentary results. Parliamentary are (sic) very low, so typically the PCs manage that so oftentimes it is difficult to get our parliamentary numbers...A good number of our parliamentary sheets are not in."
On the night of the declaration of the results, Jean Mensa, the Electoral Commission chairperson stated that, "Currently the election results we have declared exclude that of the Techiman South Constituency, with a voter population of one hundred and twenty-eight thousand and eighteen. The said election results are not ready because they are being contested. As such collation is not complete. The difference between the total number of votes [obtained] by the first and second candidates is five hundred and fifteen thousand, five hundred and twenty-four votes."
She continued: "As a result, even if we added the one hundred and twenty-eight thousand and eighteen to the results of the second candidate, it would not change the outcome of the Presidential Election. Hence our declaration of the 2020 results without that of Techiman South.
"If we were to add the results from Techiman South Constituency, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo would obtain 50.8% of the votes and John Dramani Mahama, would obtain 47.873% of the votes."
But on Thursday, December 10, the EC issued a statement admitting an error saying its Chairperson, "inadvertently used 13,433,573 as the total valid votes cast".
"The total valid votes cast is 13,119,460. This does not change the percentages stated for each candidate and the declaration made by the Chairperson."
The subsequent changes of the results, the next day did not reflect that of Techiman South.
But the incumbent NPP has insisted that it won the Techiman South Constituency seat in the Bono East Region, thereby making Martin Agyei-Mensah Korsah the MP-elect.
He polled allegedly 49,682 votes representing 50.24% as against the NDC candidate Christopher Beyere Baasongti who polled 49,205 votes representing 49.76%.
The incumbent NPP claims that their pink sheets which they received from the EC showed their candidate won the seat but the NDC doubted these claims indicating that the governing party do not have their own pink sheet.
Addressing journalists last Friday, Prince Yaw Donyina, a former Municipal Chief Executive of the Techiman Municipality refuted the claims by the NDC that the incumbent party does not even have its own pink sheets for the constituency provided by the EC.
He said the claim that the NPP did not have the pink sheets should be disregarded, as they have all their documents intact.
The NDC has always rejected the NPP's position on the declaration, asserting that the pink sheets do not suggest that the NPP is the winner of the constituency.
There is controversy over whether the collation exercise took place for that parliamentary election.
Missing Pink Sheets:
Meanwhile, the NDC led by its General Secretary, John Asiedu Nketiah, Lt. Col Larry Gbevlo-Lartey, Peter Boamah Otukunor, Baba Jamal, Kojogah Adawudu among others, have visited both the constituency and the regional offices of the EC to get the constituency pink sheet from which the NPP's Martin Agyei-Mensah Korsah was declared the winner of the poll, but they were not given.
During their interaction, the Returning Officer for the constituency told them to go to the regional office where he had sent the copies including that of the NDC.
On Election Day and during the collation, the NDC raised some objections and the subsequent confusion at the place where the collation was being done called for an intervention by the security agencies.
The NDC insisted that the results were not officially declared by the Returning Officer.
When the NDC officials from Accra visited the EC's office, the directive by the Returning Officer for them to go to the Regional Office for it did not go down well with them as they insisted that by law the Returning Officer was the one who was supposed to give them the copy.
The NCA boss' revelation on Good Evening Ghana that the NPP has a big challenge with the Parliamentary result could just be the reason the EC officers were unable to supply the NDC delegation with the constituency pink sheet from which it declared the NPP parliamentary candidate the winner.
Joe Anokye's statement on Metro TV, cast doubt over the authenticity of the constituency pink sheet allegedly available to the incumbent NPP.
When asked by Paul Adom-Otchere whether Jean Mensa, the EC boss, was referring to parliamentary result or presidential result from Techiman South when she said that the results were not in, Anokye responded that as far as he was aware, there was an issue with one polling station, but he was unsure which of the results Jean Mensa meant.
Many have argued that both the presidential and parliamentary results are declared by the same Returning Officer, so if the presidential election results were declared and the parliamentary omitted, or vice versa, there should be witnesses and whether the EC's 10 December press release was referring to the parliamentary results.
Watch Joe Anokye in the video below:
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