The Electoral Commission’s decision to conduct a rerun in 19 polling stations within the Ablekuma North constituency has drawn sharp reactions across Ghana’s political divide. Still, Majority Leader Hon. Mahama Ayariga has defended the Commission’s move, questioning why the Minority would oppose a process rooted in procedural integrity.
Speaking in Parliament, the Majority Leader cited a July 2, 2025 press release by the Electoral Commission (EC), which detailed the Commission’s latest position following multiple engagements with representatives of both the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP).
According to the statement, the EC convened a meeting on July 1, 2025, as a follow-up to an earlier June 12 meeting with both political parties. At the heart of the disagreement was the validity of pink sheets used during the collation of results from the December 7 parliamentary elections.
“The issue in contention has to do with the fact that 37 pink sheets provided by the NPP and used to collate the results were scanned copies,” the EC clarified in its statement.
The NDC maintained that the use of scanned pink sheets made the results from those polling stations invalid, hence called for a rerun in all 37 stations. The NPP, on the other hand, argued that results from only three polling stations were outstanding, and once collated, a winner should be declared, since NDC agents had already verified the scanned results presented by the NPP.
Hon. Mahama Ayariga explained that the EC’s ultimate decision to rerun the election in 19 out of the 37 polling stations stemmed from a critical detail.
“The 19 scanned polling station results used for the collation, though approved by agents of both political parties, were not verified by the presiding officers responsible for those polling stations”
Hon. Mahama Ayariga, Majority Leader
He added that this point was raised during an earlier EC presentation to Parliament by the Deputy EC Chair, Bossman Asare, in order to prevent any further and unnecessary confusion about what the real issue was surrounding the Ablekuma North results.
Destroyed Pink Sheets
The EC’s press release noted that during the collation of the results in the aftermath of the 2024 general elections, supporters of political parties stormed the collation centre and destroyed several original pink sheets for the Ablekuma North parliamentary contest.
The reliance on scanned copies, in the absence of these originals, became inevitable, but the absence of verification by presiding officers later cast a cloud over their legitimacy.
“It is just fair and reasonable,” Hon. Ayariga stressed, “that if their own officers did not verify those pink sheets, then they should rerun those polling stations.”
While Hon. Ayariga questioned the Minority’s fears, the New Patriotic Party has also not taken kindly to the EC’s decision. In a recent press conference, the party accused the Commission of shifting goalposts and yielding to political pressure.
They insisted that the pink sheets – though scanned – were acknowledged by both parties’ agents during the original collation and should be deemed valid.
Meanwhile, Hon. Alexander Afenyo-Markin, speaking earlier in Parliament, warned against actions that could undermine democratic stability.
“We should be careful as a country how we are managing this democracy,” he said, expressing concern that the rerun might be influenced by recent public statements by senior political figures aimed at pressuring the EC into a decision favorable to their interests.
However, the EC’s decision, according to Hon. Ayariga, was driven not by external pressure but by a need to adhere to transparent electoral standards.
“This is what has made them go back and think over it and now decide that they have to come clean on the fact that their own presiding officers did not verify the scanned pink sheets. That is why they are calling for a rerun of those 19 polling stations”
Hon. Mahama Ayariga, Majority Leader
He concluded with a direct challenge to the Minority: “I don’t know why you are afraid. Why are you afraid?”
As political tensions escalate ahead of the rerun, both parties continue to frame the issue through competing narratives of fairness and manipulation.
However, with the government of the day committed to upholding the tenets of democratic governance, national attention remains fixed on whether the EC can navigate this episode with impartiality and public confidence intact.
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