Former President John Mahama
Former President John Dramani Mahama appears not to have recovered from his second electoral defeat in the hands of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the 2020 polls as he cries foul in the United States (US) with fresh attack on the Chair of the Electoral Commission (EC), Jean Adukwei Mensa over how the elections were conducted.
According to the twice defeated National Democratic Congress (NDC) presidential candidate, there were several anomalies in the election results as declared by Mrs. Mensa, including declaration of the result from an unknown location for which he went to the Supreme Court.
“We went to court for many reasons, one, because of the many anomalies in the results.
“The Electoral Commissioner went to an unknown location and declared the election results from there and after she declared the results and the results didn’t tally, she came and changed the results and changed, we don’t know how many multiple times. That was an issue that we had to deal with,” Mr. Mahama told the United States Chapter of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) at the Bentley University on Sunday March 27.
He was of the view that the elections should have been conducted without the involvement of the Military, saying that security at polling stations and collation centres during Ghana’s elections has always been the duty of the Police and not the Military.
“Eight of our citizens were brutally gunned down by men who were in uniform, we know those people, the Invisible and Delta Forces that have been enrolled into the Army and the Police.
“Our forces have been quite discipline forces and today, you see some of them and you wonder whether these are really disciplined Ghanaian soldiers or Policemen. You see them wearing earrings and they wear Azugu masks.
“For the first time, at the polling stations we saw heavily armed soldiers.
“We have all been MPs before, security at collation centres and around electoral polling stations was handled mainly by the Police, the Military were not involved. On this occasion, you see Military at polling stations and at collation centres. I think it was wrong,” according to him.
Contrary to the claim he told the Divisional Chief of Prestea Himan, Nana Nteboah Prah, as part of his Thank You tour of the Western Region that they uncovered one million extra ballot papers, the former president said this time around had increased the numbers to millions.
“More than one million extra ballot papers were printed, which the EC claimed happened by mistake but on the day of the elections, some of the more than one million extra ballot papers had already been secretly thumb-printed in favour of the NPP,” he told the chiefs on his tour.
However, Mr. Mahama appears to have changed the narrative when speaking with the United States Chapter of the NDC, per the number of extra ballots papers claimed to have been uncovered.
He said “We have all done elections before and at the printing press, all the political parties are supposed to send agents to the printing press. We sit there from the time they start printing until we finish. When they finish, we all tally how many ballots they were asked to print, we all look at the numbers and everything and if we are satisfied then all the agents sign a certificate of completion to say that we are satisfied, that it tallies with the number you were asked to print.
“And so, we did that at the printing press and left. But one of our agents had to go back, he was going to look for something, he had left his laptop bag and so he was going to look for it, only for him to see millions of ballot papers being printed.
“When he asked why they were printing extra ballot papers, they said the EC had asked them to print. Out of frustration, they said in case there was a second round. But seven people will not go for second round, ballot papers for a second round is only for two people, the top two. No proper explanation on why those ballot papers were printed, were given.
“Some of the people were seen later carrying ballot papers and we reported them to the police. Up till date, nobody has been charged or prosecuted for carrying those extra ballot papers.
“These are the things that happened in the elections and so we thought the elections weren’t free and fair and so we went to the Supreme Court. One, to test our legal right and then secondly, to also calm the atmosphere.
“The atmosphere was quite charged, a few of our people took to the streets, there was a threat of violence, and we didn’t want to go down that path and so it was better to use what the constitution has given us. Once we filed the suit I noticed that it calmed everybody and of course we went and got 7:0 on every issue that we raised.”
By Vincent Kubi