The Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) has called on the presidential candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Mahama to resolve his grievances over the results of the recent general elections through legal means.
Speaking in a media interaction, Dr Kojo Asante, Director of Policy and Advocacy for CDD, appealed to all aggrieved parties to seek redress in court as soon as possible to avert tension and further loss of lives.
“Mr. Mahama, the NDC and the NPP are very experienced people when it comes to elections. They know that whatever the issue is, one must know the appropriate process that ought to apply. If you are challenging a result, you have to ensure that the pink sheet the EC is using, is different from what you are using. There should be a discrepancy. In some cases, it must be one polling station. A court might decide that if the two parties cannot agree and the data doesn’t tally, an election is organised for that polling station, so we can declare a winner. These things can be resolved easily.”
His comment comes on the back of John Mahama declaring his inability to accept the results of the elections that retained his opponent and candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Akufo-Addo in office.
Former President Mahama described the results as flawed and hinted that his party will take the next line of action after auditing the pink sheets available to them.
Dr Asante further went on to say that, he regrets that people have died for nothing adding that, that will never resolve the results.
“We are still going to declare a winner for one person no matter what. And if the other person doesn’t agree, he has to challenge it in court. That is the only way you can say that you have been cheated and that the right thing has been done. No one can give it to you by word of mouth. It has to be done through a process. That is why I entreat that since he has the data, he brings the process early so that we can correct the errors. That is what I encourage the parties to do rather than inciting people.”
Touching on the errors with regards to the Electoral Commission’s (EC) communication of the 2020 General Election results, he intimated that, the errors though embarrassing do not affect the integrity of the results.
“If you take total votes cast which include rejected ballots, you will get a higher figure. And the total rejected ballot was about 2.2% we estimated. So, I am sure the person calculating it used the total valid votes. So, once you adjust it with the data, it doesn’t really affect who won for example. So those conclusions by the EC do not change with that and you can explain why that happened. If it had to do with the actual placement of the total valid votes then, you will have to raise a concern…So, it is embarrassing for the EC but in terms of the integrity of the declaration of the election, I for one is not saying we should have challenges with the EC’s declaration.”
