We await President Mahama’s reply; Let’s get down to business – NPP

The New Patriotic Party says the Electoral Commission’s reply to its petition at the Supreme Court has shown that the Commission is “full of arrogance and irreverence”, thereby providing "no justification for the flaws, other than pathetic excuses about signatures not passing through 3 sheets of carbon paper and suggesting that there were nearly a ¼ million voters added to the rolls late because they were foreign service or NGO officials, students abroad on government scholarships, or international peacekeepers."

The Electoral Commission on Monday discounted claims by the main opposition party that according to their findings, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo should have been declared winner in the 2012 Presidential elections.

A statement released on behalf of the Electoral Commission by Lynes Quashie-Idun described the NPP’s petition as one “without merit" and therefore prayed the Supreme Court to “dismiss it” since the EC did not engage in any misconduct or connive with the National Democratic Congress to ensure that President John Dramani Mahama emerges victor in the elections.

The Commission also prayed the Supreme Court to "order the petitioners to provide particulars of the polling stations in which voting without verification is alleged by them to have taken place.”

But the New Patriotic Party at a news conference today says the Electoral Commission “spent more time and energy debating vocabulary by quoting definitions of adjectives from dictionaries” than defending the people of Ghana.

At the news conference, NPP National Chairman, Jake Obetsebi Lamptey said “despite being funded by the taxpayers to the tune of hundreds of millions of cedis", the EC "ran an election in which 1 in every 8 votes will have to be thrown out.”

The NPP reiterated their readiness to commence their legal battle with the Electoral Commission and the ruling National Democratic Congress, under the leadership of President John Mahama.

“We await the reply of the President today so that the Supreme Court can get down to business and begin hearing testimony and evaluating evidence.”

Below is the full statement:


PRESS CONFERENCE ADDRESSED BY THE CHAIRMAN OF THE NEW PATRIOTIC PARTY, JAKE OBETSEBI LAMPTEY, ON THE 9TH OF JANUARY 2012 AT THE HEADQUARTERS OF THE PARTY

We welcome you, ladies and gentlemen of the press, to our maiden press encounter in 2013. We wish you all a blessed and prosperous 2013 and hope that this New Year will see an even better partnership between us in helping to deepen our democracy.

Today, we’d like to provide you with an update on NPP’s recent activities in pursuit of justice and the status of the petition brought before the Supreme Court of Ghana by three distinguished members of our party.

We undertake this battle of justice – not merely for the more than 5 million people who voted for our party, and certainly not for the glory of our Presidential candidate – but on behalf of all Ghanaians, including those yet unborn, and indeed Africans from across the continent who are watching our case and looking to Ghana to pave the way forward. Our nation has always been at the forefront of democratic change and political progress, and we are confident that the wisdom and foresight of our justices will make our beacon of democracy shine even brighter.

It is very important that everyone understand that the election, the inauguration, and the Supreme Court case are linked together by our Constitution. And so long as we follow the letter of the law in our Constitution, these 3 events cannot be separated. They are linked together by the rule of law.

The 1992 Constitution, in its wisdom, fully envisioned the possibility of a disputed election. It foresaw a circumstance where those in power and desperate to hang on to it would conspire to violate the sovereign will of the Ghanaian people.

As such, the Constitution allows a provision to challenge that fraud in the Supreme Court of Ghana. Article 64 states that a challenge petition must be filed within 21 days of the electoral result being officially announced, and of course that is what we did at the end of last month. The next steps in the Constitutional process are the replies of the respondents; namely the EC and John Mahama, who was the beneficiary of the malpractices. The EC reply was entered on Monday afternoon and made public yesterday, and I shall discuss it shortly. We await the reply of the President today so that the Supreme Court can get down to business and begin hearing testimony and evaluating evidence.

The framers of the 1992 Constitution fully envisioned a President being declared the winner of an election, a challenge being entered 21 days later, and just a week after that, the inauguration taking place on the basis of the original declaration. Thus, the court case to determine the validity of the challenge, and therefore of the inauguration itself, takes place – in the evaluating of evidence, calling of witnesses, and deliberations of the justices – after the inauguration has taken place and the President sets about the business of state. However – and this is the most important point that all Ghanaians and in fact the world over must remember at all times – the inauguration is NOT a point of no return.

The specific language states: “A declaration by the Supreme Court that the election of the President is not valid shall be without prejudice to anything done by the President before the declaration. What this means is that the Court can declare, as we are confident that they will do in the interest of justice shortly, that the election of December 7 and 8, when corrected for invalid and fraudulent votes, actually resulted in the victory of Nana Akufo-Addo. Therefore John Mahama must vacate the Castle and a new inauguration of the proper President must take place immediately. Once in office, President Akufo-Addo will respect whatever laws may have been enacted by his predecessor, no matter how short the duration of the invalidated mandate.

The Ghanaian people expect this constitutional transition to the validly elected president to be smooth, unencumbered and peaceful.

The Supreme Court is the final arbiter of all electoral disputes. And, thanks to the Almighty, they will be able to deliberate in a national environment of peace without any threat of violence whatsoever. Indeed, the many frustrated voters who feel that their sovereign will has been violated have been patient, because they are expecting justice to be done by the Supreme Court.

Essentially, there are 5 main categories that invalidate votes, all of which are drawn from the pinksheets. We have over 24,000 of them, on which we have conducted a painstaking analysis. The 5 categories are:

1. Overvoting
2. Voting w/o verification
3. Lack of EC signature
4. “Ghost” polling stations
5. Mismatching words and numbers

We contend that when all of these 5 categories are combined, over 1 million 342 thousand votes will be invalidated. That is a monstrous sum! Imagine: 1 in every 8 votes declared by the EC were invalid.

Consider that only 300,000 votes separated the 2 candidates in the EC announcement, yet that sum, plus 1,000,000 more, will be invalidated. That is the astonishing and devastating evidence on the pinksheets.

Consider that only 150,000 invalid Mahama votes are required to push him below 50% and therefore force a runoff, yet nearly 6 times that amount have been identified as invalid Mahama votes.

Consider that only 520,000 invalid Mahama votes are required to give Nana Akufo-Addo a 1-touch victory outright, yet nearly double that amount have been identified.

I want all Ghanaians to remember the following numbers: 2, 4, 6, 8, 12, 127.

From: Adu Gyamfi Ameyaw