Sunday,
July 28, 2013
My
good friends, as we wait for the addresses to be delivered by the counsel for
the petitioners and the respondents, respectively, we should continue to
examine issues with the view to preparing our minds for what they will say in
summing up their arguments.
We
all have a stake in the matter and should not detach ourselves from it. After
all, we have been monitoring developments and know how the tide flows. We are
capable of scrutinizing issues and should do so, even if we rely on the 9
Supreme Court judges to end it all.
The
main argument raised by the petitioners and their supporters is that the
petition is good because it will lead to electoral reforms. I refute that
porous argument because there is nothing to support it. Nowhere in the various
versions of the NPP’s petition is anything said to that effect. Everything is
centred on the demand for reliefs based on the annulment of over 4 million
votes and Akufo-Addo declared as winner of the 2012 Presidential elections.
Whom are these NPP people trying to deceive but themselves?
They
don’t even want the Supreme Court to examine the integrity of Election 2012? If
they do, why will they not extend their scrutiny of the pink sheets to all the
26,000 polling stations but limit their work to 24,000 and come out with
slightly over 11,000 as their benchmark for alleging irregularities? And the
KPMG has even rubbished their exhibits, reducing the number to slightly over
8,000?
Here
is how someone has put it:
If
the petitioners truly want the court to evaluate the integrity of the 2012
Presidential elections and arrive at a just conclusion without prejudice to any
party, it is incumbent on them—in the interest of fairness and equity—to
subject the whole of the 24,000 pink sheets to the same scrutiny as they
accorded the 11,000 that they tendered as evidence.
Whether
coincidentally or by design (which is more likely), those 11,000 pink sheets
pleaded as their “water-tight evidence” were selected from the constituencies
won by the first respondent (President Mahama).
By
excluding more than half of the total polling stations in the country, and
without including any pink sheets from the constituencies won by the first
petitioner (Akufo-Addo), it is impossible for the Supreme Court to arrive at a
correct decision, using a limited number of pink sheets as evidence.
In
admitting that errors occurred, all that Dr. Bawumia kept saying was that it
was an error but it shouldn't affect someone's presidency. He admitted the
errors detected in the pink sheet exhibits but insisted on explaining that even
though there were duplications, triplications, and quadruplications, he used
only one pink sheet for his analysis.
Everything
he said was tied to this “analysis” as if the Court cares about his
self-opinionated understanding of the issues at stake. Indeed, Bawumia doesn’t
know that the Court is interested in nothing but irrefutable evidence, which in
this case will be expected to be based nowhere else but on what happened at the
elections.
Unfortunately
for him and his co-petitioners, he continued to admit that the pink sheet
exhibits were fraught with anomalies, mislabellings, duplications,
triplications, and quadruplications. Is this what will win the minds of the
judges?
And
why did they choose only the Presidential elections to contest when the general
elections were two-fold—Presidential and Parliamentary—and the processes
integrated?
Now,
to another aspect involving the transpositional errors on the pink sheets,
apparently because some Presiding Officers failed to sign the pink sheets or
made transpositional/clerical errors in recording figures.
Do
we even know the political affiliation of the Presiding Officers whose errors the
petitioners are capitalizing on? Could they be the internal collaborators who
had been induced to commit such errors to be taken as the basis for this
petition? (a question that I asked in response to a comment made by a
contributor to an earlier discussion thread).
I
asked this question because it underlies the storm that the NPP petitioners
have set in a tea cup, which they are begging the Supreme Court to settle in
their favour.
We
are aware of the admissions made by Dr. Afari Gyan that the EC faced serious
challenges in conducting Election 2012, one of which was about technical
glitches (concerning equipment), which was solved and enabled the elections to
be held over two days (December 7 and 8)—the first in the country’s
politico-electoral history.
Another
major problem was human-based, regarding the calibre of people recruited by the
EC to handle tasks on Election Day. Most of these recruits were appointed as
Presiding Officers to oversee the elections. They were regarded as
non-permanent (unofficial) staff of the EC but vested with as much power as the
country’s Constitution provides or the EC’s own regulations stipulate.
Dr.
Afari Gyan said that as usual, the majority of these unofficial staff were
teachers who were recruited from all over the country and given some basic
training to know the do’s and don’t’s of the electoral process.
Some
workshops were organized all over the period to help them sharpen their skills
for the D-day. Obviously, training these officials couldn’t be all-inclusive. Thus,
some foibles and frailties couldn’t be eradicated.
Although
the EC has always insisted that those eligible for recruitment as non-official
EC staff (Presiding Officers) shouldn’t be known activists or followers of any
political party, no one could confirm that those selected for Election 2012
were depoliticized.
The
EC might have caused an initial vetting to be done and some unofficial, casual
investigation done into the background of the prospective recruits before their
being accepted to function as such. But who won’t know that each of those
unofficial staff members definitely has a political persuasion to defer to,
even if suppressed for purposes of doing the EC’s work and earning some income
thereby.
At
this point, the suspicion is that all those who worked as Presiding Officers
voted for specific political candidates (Presidential and Parliamentary) in
consonance with their political convictions. So, as political beings, they have
their political interests to safeguard.
Now,
to the main issue. With this background information, it will be dangerously
ridiculous for anybody to say that the Presiding Officers had no political
interest at stake. They had one and still do.
Here
is why I want to stick my neck out to say that the technicality of non-signing
of pink sheets and anomalies in entries being raised by the petitioners to
support their stance against President Mahama and the EC could be a
well-crafted act of treachery or sabotage by Presiding Officers compromised by
the petitioners even before the final results of the elections were announced
by Dr. Afari Gyan.
Otherwise,
why did they not sign the pink sheets as required by law? Why did they mess up
the entries to create doubts about them? Mere oversight or deliberate mischief
to support a premeditated move by their handlers to challenge the outcome of
the Presidential elections?
Knowing
very well how the pendulum of opinion polls and the reception given them before
the elections swung against them—and a constant premonition that they would lose
the elections—couldn’t the NPP people have surreptitiously compromised the
Presiding Officers at polling stations whose pink sheets are in contention to
commit those errors in the pink sheets for them to capitalize on? My hunch!!
In
this sense, shouldn’t these Presiding Officers have been summonsed by the
Supreme Court for evidence to be gathered from them so that we could all know
the truth behind those clerical errors?
I
can tell from the pitiable confidence that the petitioners have placed in those
technicalities that they know how a premeditated error in the pink sheets can
work to sustain their protests. It is the usual treachery that no one who knows
how desperation can drive politicians crazy should overlook. But it will lead
them nowhere but a dead-end, which I expect to detect in the address to be
delivered on July 31 by their lead counsel, Philip Addison.
Clearly, it is a contest between
REALITY (what exactly happened on Election Day as recorded in the votes cast
and announced as the true reflection of the voters' will) and TECHNICALITIES
(the use of transpositional/clerical errors on pink sheets by people desperately
seeking political power through the back door).
The REALITY will definitely
displace the TECHNICALITIES because those represented by that REALITY are wide
awake and won't sit down unconcerned for the manipulators hiding behind the
TECHNICALITIES to prevail at the Supreme Court.
No genuine desire for reforming
the electoral process will produce this kind of petition. Clearly what the NPP
petitioners are pursuing is a self-serving one, which is so haphazardly and treacherously
skewed as to betray their desperation and morbid desire for political power
through the back door. Such a desire won’t materialize because it is sinister.
And the petitioners and their benighted followers will be told the truth very
soon.
I shall return…
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mjbokor@yahoo.com
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