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NDC Endorses Petitioners Case...Opens Way For A Re-run?
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- Parent Category: Our Country
- Category: Elections & Governance
- Created on Tuesday, 07 May 2013 00:00
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NDC Endorses Petitioners Case...Opens Way For A Re-run?
Counsel for the National Democratic Congress, in the ongoing Supreme Court petition challenging the declared outcome of the December 7th Presidential election, on Tuesday endorsed the case of the petitioners that the December Presidential elections were fraught with irregularities.Tsatsu Tsikata did so by introducing new pink sheets outside the 11,138 pink sheets being challenged by the petitioners to prove that indeed there were irregularities in the elections, with his intention being to suggest that those irregularities also happened in the strongholds of the NPP.
This interesting turn of events, which occurred as Counsel for the 3rd Respondents continued his cross examination of the main witness of the petitioners, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, seems to have strengthened the case of the petitioners who have long held that the elections of December 7th were marred with widespread irregularities which affected the outcome of the elections and largely inured to the benefit of John Mahama.
It would be observed that since the commencement of the case all the respondents, the Electoral Commission, John Mahama and the NDC have maintained that the elections were not affected by irregularities whatsoever with John Mahama even stating during his State of the Nation address that the 2012 Elections was “by far the most credible, transparent, free and fair since 1992.”
The introduction of this new line of argument by the NDC and to an extent John Mahama, as the two submitted a joint affidavit, isolates the Electoral Commission, which would now become the only respondent still insisting that the elections were perfect.
Counsel for the NDC, Tsatsu Tsikata, who introduced the new pink sheets showing irregularities in the elections in other polling stations other than what the petitioners are challenging sought to suggest with those polling stations that the petitioners did not act in good faith and had been selective in choosing the polling stations affected by irregularities.
However, counsel for the petitioners Philip Addison quickly responded and pointed out to the Judges that indeed the question of acting in bad faith could not come in because the petitioners had long stated that they had analyzed only 24,000 pink sheets out of the 26,002 polling stations nationwide.
According to a source at the NPP headquarters, the bad faith can now be attributed to the NDC who by their action today have proved that indeed they were aware of the irregularities in the elections including over voting but they kept silent because their candidate John Mahama was declared winner by the Electoral Commission.
“The claim of the NDC could not also be true because as Dr. Bawumia stated in court on Tuesday, there are over a 1,000 polling stations being challenged out of the 11,138 polling stations where the NPP’s Nana Akufo-Addo actually won. Again per the analysis of the petitioners, they are asking the court to annul 1,388,239 votes from the total votes tally of Nana Akufo-Addo while the annulments would also mean that 2,910,103 votes would have to be annulled from the total votes tally of John Mahama,” the source added.
The source continued, “Per the new argument of the NDC however, it seems the party has now opened the way for a re-run of the elections which now might have become the safest route for the party after its failure to destroy the case of the petitioners after eleven days of cross examining the main witness of the petitioners, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia.”
Source: Communications Directorate, NPP/Ghana
