Deputy Minister of Information, Pius Enam Hadzide, asserts that the National Democratic Congress’ (NDC) inability to accept the result of the just-ended polls is a stunt they are pulling to make its supporters feel good about the party.
“This is clearly a normal trick in the book; that when political parties lose elections, the leadership in an attempt to manage the feelings and expectations of members and supporters engage in some of these gimmicks. So if you are not careful you might fall for them,” he said.
The NDC has attacked the credibility of the electoral results and have strongly expressed its unwillingness to accept the outcome of the election following what it describes as ‘election irregularities’.
The party’s presidential candidate, John Dramani Mahama subsequently revealed at a press conference on Thursday, December 10, 2020, that the party will audit the outcomes of the poll to inform its next line of action.
Mr. Hadzide said the reason why the party is dragging its feet in seeking redress in court is that the party executives know their case will lack conviction in court.
“I am not surprised by their conduct. When President Kufour won the elections in 2004, we heard the same narrative. In fact, they started some court proceedings just that they did not continue. We believe that we had a strong case in 2012 so we did not abandon it.
“Even if the NDC starts the court proceedings they will abandon it because this is much ado about nothing,” he added.
The credibility of the results released by the Electoral Commission has also been questioned by a section of the public following disparities in the presidential results. This has brought the Commission under a lot of public backlash.
This follows the revision of the total valid votes declared by the EC on December 9, 2020, where EC Chairperson, Jean Mensa announced different figures for the valid votes cast as well as the percentage of votes polled by president-elect, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo as compared to what the Commission released on December 10 on its website.
The Commission subsequently amended the error in different press statements and clarified that the change “does not change the percentages stated for each candidate and the declaration made by the Chairperson.”
Mr. Hadzide admonished Ghanaians to pardon the mistakes from the EC as they are just human errors.
“We must understand that errors are bound to occur in human institutions. We are but mere mortals. We should be talking about investing more in improving capacities.”
Lawyer Yaw Oppong who was on the same panel noted that in as much as Ghanaians would appreciate certainty from the Electoral Commission in situations such as this, what should be of more concern is if any of presidential candidates suffered damaging loss as a result of the changes made in the final results.
“In all this, the ultimate question to answer is, in totality, was any of the candidates worse off? Did it amount to a detrimental effect on one of the candidates as against the other?”
He said these are legitimate questions to be answered if the NDC decides to proceed to court.
