The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has slammed the Electoral Commission (EC) for describing the 2020 presidential and parliamentary polls as the most credible.
Director of Elections for the NDC, Elvis Afriyie Ankrah addressing, a press conference, stated that contrary to the claims by the EC Chairperson that the 2020 general elections, was the best in the history of Ghana, it was manipulated.
”…the facts show that last year’s election was one of the most poorly conducted, flawed and manipulated elections in the history of this country, a situation that has undermined the strides we have made since the inception of this 4th republican democratic dispensation”.
On reasons why they described the 2020 polls as poor, he outlined the following reasons:
1. 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.
2. The unprecedented number of rejected ballots recorded in the elections owing 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.
3. The use of illegal Statement of Polls/pink sheets (Form 8B) that omitted BVD entries 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.
4. Widespread cases of patent arithmetic errors on the faces of pink sheets and constituency results summary sheets by incompetent EC staff in the filling of electoral forms and aggregation of valid votes.
5. Manipulation of figures by the EC leading to a disparity between constituency collated results aggregate (13,118,640) and regional collated results aggregates (13,119,460).
6. Padding of votes at the constituency collation centers in favor of candidate Akufo-Addo.
7. No proper collation at the national collation center by the Returning Officer for the Presidential elections, Mrs. Jean Adukwei Mensah.
8. 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.
9. Also 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 Parliamentary Candidate, John Peter Amewu win the Hohoe seat. Is this what Jean Mensa and her bias Commission is inviting us to celebrate?
11. Again, 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 allowances, 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.
By: Rainbowradioonline.com