Professor Edward Gyampo, an Associate Professor at the University of Ghana, has asked the Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, to provide evidence to the claims he made regarding the election in 2020.
He averred that if truly the New Patriotic Party employed tactics to win more seats, he should come out with clear evidence in that regard.
“Unless he has clear evidence to support this claim. The 2020 Elections was a clearly competitive one. It’s was an unprecedented election and we’ve never had elections that has produced such results before.
“So, one can argue that the opposition wants more but the evidence that we have seen in the declaration of the results shows that the ruling party won. If there is any other evidence that points otherwise, the thing that can be done is to pull this evidence.”
Prof Gyampo
Professor Gyampo further indicated that the election petition ruling had solved all issues relating to the elections.
“They went to court. If they had that evidence, they should have shown this evidence there. These things have been settled because we’ve handled them in court by the ruling.”
Prof Gyampo
The Speaker of Parliament in a recent comment on Election 2020 stated that, the NPP was bent on deploying any tactics to win more seats in the elections, because Parliament had gone in favor of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC).
Speaker’s comment problematic
According to Professor Gyampo, the Speaker being the one to have made such comments is a bit problematic.
“For a whole Speaker to be saying this, I mean, it’s a bit problematic. Because he is not able to adduce clear evidence to support whatever he is saying. If you do that, it undermines the expected neutrality.
“Bagbin is expected to be a very firm and neutral person who will not even do the bidding of his own party and he sounded that caution. And if he begins to make such statements not backed by evidence, you open yourself up for needless criticisms.”
Prof Gyampo
Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, in an interaction with a delegation from the Ethiopian Parliament, alleged that John Boadu admitted that NDC won more seats in Parliament, but some last-minute moves were made to snatch some of the seats from the NDC.
“They would have had a Majority in Parliament. Their General Secretary even announced it that, at the last minute, he made some movement and some seats were snatched. That one is a statement of fact.”
Alban Bagbin
John Boadu on election claims
However, the General Secretary of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), John Boadu, has described the claim by Speaker of Parliament that Parliamentary majority went in favor of opposition National Democratic Party (NDC) as falsehood.
According to him, there is no iota of truth in such statement made by the Speaker to the Ethiopian Parliament since he has never stated anywhere that the NPP devised tactics to get parliamentary majority in its favor.
He stated that the NPP had always maintained in it post elections comment that the party had won majority of the Parliamentary seats.
