The Ashanti Regional Director of the Electoral Commission, Mr. Benjamin Bannor-Bio has discounted claims of the Commission inflating figures during the process of collating the presidential ballots in the Ashanti Region.
Responding to allegations of stuffing ballot boxes at polling centers, he noted that it is unfounded as they follow due process in ensuring fairness in results.
“If there are any anomaly, parties raise it up and we thrash it out before they move on. You come to the regional collation officers’ level, what I did as a regional collation officer is to collate the results, announced at each of the 47 constituencies of which copies have already been given to the political parties. They were here with me, any results that come in I announce it to them and everybody gets satisfied before I even add it to my collation sheet.
“So, this transparent processes, there’s no way anybody can do anything to avert the results and if you go to the national collation center, where the Electoral Commission as the returning officer is mandated by law to collate for the presidential election, there too we have the agents present.
“In the Ashanti Region, nothing untoward happened. We used the result summaries from all the forty seven constituencies in the region, gave copies of the collated results to them and then the summary reports too we gave them copies; they all appended their signatures.
“If somebody is talking about figures being inflated I don’t know where it is coming from”.
Explaining the various procedures which underpins the collation of results, Mr. Bannor-Bio stated that if “somebody says that the figures were inflated, then the person is either not aware of the processes and procedures that are put in place for elections, especially for this year’s elections”.
According to him, at every level of elections, at each polling stations, they have all the political party agents there.
As such, at the close of the election in the Ashanti Region, “ballot papers that have been cast are counted in the open and are counted audibly for everyone there to know and when they finish counting, they complete polling station result forms”.
“These forms are signed by both our officials and the party agents and copies are given to each party agent present. These documents become the primary source for declaring any election at any level. So, when you come to the collation center, we have representatives of political parties there; then we collate these polling station results-every constituency does that and there too we have the agents there. After collation, collation forms are filled and then the summary results are also completed; both documents are signed by officials and then polling agents”.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) after the declaration of President Akufo-Addo by the EC Chair as the President-elect, reluctantly refused to accept the result of the 2020 presidential elections.
Speaking at a press conference, the Minority leader in Parliament, Haruna Iddrisu, said the NDC has “overwhelming” evidence that proves that the party’s candidate, John Dramani Mahama won the election.
“As a party, we have had extensive consultations and detailed analysis of the outcome of the elections as announced by Jean Mensa, the EC chair.
“We have come to only one irresistible conclusion, that it is a flawed discredited election and therefore we reject the presidential result without any reservation”.
