Sunday,
May 12, 2013
My good friends, we want to
analyze the circumstances surrounding the NPP’s petition that have brought
matters to a head at the end of the 14th day of the Supreme Court’s
sitting and the order for the KPMG firm to recount/audit the pink sheet exhibits submitted by the petitioners as their affidavits.
I strongly believe that whatever
doubts, suspicions, and apprehensions there may be at this stage can be traced
to the history behind this petition. That history is not only murky but also
suggestive of dishonesty, which if we get to know well won’t surprise us that
the quantum of pink sheet exhibits is under scrutiny at this stage in the
determination of the case.
Let’s start analyzing the issues
from the very genesis of the suit and plot how the inconsistencies and murkiness
set the tone for what has led to the Supreme Court’s order that the KPMG
recount/audit the pink sheet exhibits as requested by Tsatsu Tsikata, counsel
for the third respondents (the NDC).
Leaping
before looking
When just about 10% of the results
of the Presidential elections were announced, Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie (NPP General
Secretary) took to the airwaves to announce victory for Akufo-Addo. He didn’t
stop there but proceeded to instruct the party’s followers to wear white and
prepare for a massive celebration and church services on Sunday, December 9.
Then, reality sank to change the
equation after the official results had been compiled and readied for release
by the Electoral Commissioner. Faced with the embarrassment of a shocking
first-round defeat at the hands of President Mahama, the NPP leaders forcefully
appealed to the Electoral Commissioner to withhold the announcement of the
results because they had been informed of certain malpractices that robbed
Akufo-Addo of victory.
Afari Gyan asked them to provide
documentary evidence but they couldn’t, whereupon he shrugged off their
protestations and went ahead to announce the official results, satisfied that the
elections were conducted in a free, fair, and transparent manner to the
admiration of both local and international observers. These observers issued
official statements praising Ghana for that feat. Interestingly enough, the NPP’s
Agyarko had already confirmed in an official statement that the elections were,
indeed, free, fair, and transparent. He even went further to praise Ghanaians
for doing a good job.
But when the dust settled for
them to know their sad fate, they quickly ate back their own vomit and began
making all manner of allegations, which they carried further into the initial
version of the petition that they filed against the President and the EC on
January 28, 2013.
Initial
allegations and later developments
We want to retrace their steps to
see what their allegations were, how they changed the tune at every juncture,
and what they eventually settled on as the substance of their petition being
heard by the Supreme Court. We do so to prove that the doubts cast on their
quantity of pink sheet exhibits have their root in the duplicity and vain
propaganda with which they tenaciously began their agitations and with which
they seem to be grinding to a halt midstream. That’s how they have dug their
own grave.
What were the initial allegations
against the President and the EC? Numerous, mainly:
·
that
the EC colluded with President Mahama to indulge in malpractices at the
elections;
·
that
votes meant for Akufo-Addo were stolen for President Mahama;
·
that
votes were padded for President Mahama;
·
Incontrovertible
electoral fraud—stealing of the mandate of the people;
·
that
unverified voters were allowed in the NDC’s strongholds to vote for President
Mahama while voters in the NPP’s strongholds not verified biometrically were
prevented from voting;
·
that
massive rigging was done by the EC to favour President Mahama;
·
that
the Israeli company (STL?) in Dzorwulu was complicit in intercepting election
results, doctoring them to favour President Mahama before forwarding them to
the EC to release;
·
that
28 illegal polling stations were opened to serve the interests of President
Mahama;
·
that
Ghanaians outside the country voted for President Mahama;
·
that
the electoral register had been tampered with and votes of 241,000 Ghanaians
abroad added to the votes meant for President Mahama;
·
that
the total figure for voters had been inflated to over 14 million; that the
malpractices occurred at 4,709 polling stations;
·
electoral
and constitutional coup d’état; and
·
many
more allegations that got added or reformulated over time.
In effect, the NPP’s initial
allegations suggested that the elections were fraudulent; and the EC worked
purposely to rig the elections to favour President Mahama. That was why the
petition was generated to catalogue those electoral malpractices and seek
redress at the Supreme Court.
Inconsistency
in the allegations
From the first press conference
at the Alisa Hotel in Accra after filing the petition, where all these
allegations were trumpeted, many public pronouncements by leading members of
the NPP created the impression that the elections were characterized by massive
corruption against Akufo-Addo.
They claimed that after counting
just 28 constituencies, the votes fraudulently given to President Mahama exceeded
100,000. They started with 30,000 and went up to 50,000, then 100,000, and 1
million votes stolen for President Mahama.
Many of us questioned why the NPP
chose only the Presidential aspect of the general elections to complain about
when indeed both that and the Parliamentary one constituted the elections held
on December 7 and 8.
Even before the Court could fix a
date for hearing the matter, the tune changed when the NPP raised the number of
polling stations allegedly fingered as venues where the malpractices were
carried out. From the initial 4,709 polling stations, the figure shot up to
11,976 and as of now, it is pegged at 11,842 (which the KPMG will recount,
anyway, because of Tsatsu Tsikata’s cross-examination of Bawumia, which has
revealed anomalies, inconsistencies, duplications, triplications, and
quadruplications in the pink sheet exhibits.
Of interest too is the number of
polling stations from where the pink sheet exhibits were gathered. The NPP
claimed that out of the 26,002 polling stations at which the general elections
were held, it concentrated on 24,000 out of which it finally settled on 11,842
as the core of the petition.
Even out of the 24,000 polling
stations that they claimed to have worked on, all the pink sheet exhibits are from
only the NDC’s strongholds, where President Mahama won. That is where the
petitioners are asking that 55% of votes for President Mahama and 28% for
Akufo-Addo be nullified.
Purpose
of the petition
Initially, the petitioners sought
reliefs, the most important of which was for Akufo-Addo to be declared as
winner of the Presidential elections. Now, they are no more stressing that
relief but broadening their perspective to suggest that their petition seeks to
enhance our democracy. As to how, only then can tell.
They are even claiming that their
petition is to give “justice to the Ghanaian people.” In reality, they are
telling their followers one thing and officially doing a different thing.
Tsatsu’s
cross-examination of Bawumia and matters arising
We have watched and heard the
questions-and-answer sessions throughout the 14-day proceedings at the Supreme
Court and can attest to the fact that Bawumia’s admission that the petition was
based on nothing but the pink sheets and that the evidence adduced for the
petition lay nowhere else. Thus, no first-hand evidence from any party agent
who participated in the procedures for the elections has so far been given nor
is there any indication that any will be given.
The cross-examination has centred
on many issues regarding administrative procedures: whether the election
results were recorded, whether the pink sheets were signed by the Presiding
Officers, whether the party agents signed the pink sheets or whether they
lodged any formal complaint against any aspect of the elections.
Bawumia has insisted that the
pink sheets proved over-voting (in instances where columns were left blank,
especially, or where numbers on the pink sheets conflicted with how they were written
in words and not figures; mislabelling of pink sheet exhibits, miscalculations,
and many other anomalies attributable to administrative errors. In effect, the
evidence is in the pink sheets!
What the petitioners are not
telling their followers is that the results announced by the Electoral
Commissioner came directly from what was collated, tallied, and announced at
the various polling stations and faxed to the EC’s headquarters in Accra.
Have we been told by the
Electoral Commissioner that what is on the pink sheets was what he announced as
the outcome of Election 2012? That’s not the norm. The pink sheets are just
records of what transpired and errors in the entries don’t necessarily amount
to stealing of votes for President Mahama. That’s what the petitioners have
failed to know; hence, their over-reliance on the pink sheet exhibits, which is
further exposing their own mischief because of the erroneous manner in which
they were assembled and submitted as affidavits.
As Fate would have it, their own
pink sheet exhibits have confounding errors that make a mockery of their
protestations against the EC after denying that as a human institution the EC
couldn’t be insulated against infallibility.
The duplications, triplications,
and quadruplications evident in their own exhibits as well as the instances of
padding pink sheets for Parliamentary elections with those assembled for their
case can’t be explained away as a mere “oversight” but a calculated act of
mischief and treachery, which Tsatsu has exposed, leading to the order for
those exhibits to be recounted and audited.
If for nothing at all, the
history of this NPP petition has established one incontrovertible fact: that
despite all the inconsistencies in their claims and allegations, these NPP
petitioners and party leaders have consistently told lies and misled their own
followers to the point that they waste their energies and time looking for DUNG
where no cow has grazed. Isn’t that pathetic?
Once we know the history behind what they are
in court doing, we won’t be perturbed at all by the revelations emerging during
the proceedings at the Supreme Court. Now that their own lies are beginning to
catch up with them, we won’t be surprised at if they change the tune again. Gradually,
they are inching toward the grave that they have dug for themselves and we will
help them lie therein.
I shall return…
·
E-mail:
mjbokor@yahoo.com
·
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