Nana Akua Owusu Afriyie
Nana Akua Owusu Afriyie, the 2024 New Patriotic Party (NPP) parliamentary candidate for the Ablekuma North Constituency in the Greater Accra Region, has retained the parliamentary seat for the NPP in the parliamentary elections with 414 votes difference.
According to data collated from all the 281 polling stations in the Ablekuma North Constituency, Akua Afriyie of the NPP polled a total of 34,613 votes to beat her main contender, Ewurabena Aubynn, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) parliamentary candidate for the constituency, who polled 34,199 votes.
Despite knowing that they have lost the parliamentary elections in Ablekuma North, per the records on the pink sheets, the NDC and their parliamentary candidate are refusing to accept their fate and to respect the will of the people of Ablekuma North as expressed at the polls. They are still desperately seeking to mislead their supporters and the general public into believing that they won the elections. Further to this, the NDC tried every possible means to destroy pink sheets, which are the primary records of the elections, according to reports.
It would be recalled that, on Sunday, December 8, 2024, NDC thugs stormed the Ablekuma North Constituency Collation Centre, overpowered the police, and run amok, destroying every electoral material they could lay their hands on, particularly pink sheets. In the process, they succeeded in destroying the original copies of the pink sheets that were with the Electoral Commission (EC) officials and destroyed some copies of the duplicate pink sheets that were given to the NPP.
Fortunately for the NPP, the party had scanned all their 281 pink sheets at the party collation centre before transporting them to the EC Collation Centre, which means that the NPP still has all its pink sheets intact.
In view of the vandalism that occurred at the EC collation centre by the NDC hoodlums, the EC was unable to continue with the collation exercise at the constituency collation centre. Consequently, the EC invited the parties to its Regional Office at Ridge on Monday, December 9, to complete the collation. A total of 214 polling station results were collated on Monday after verification and authentication by all the parties, leaving 67 pink sheets, which were to be collated on Tuesday, December 10.
However, when the parties got to the regional collation centre on Tuesday, the NDC representatives, in a shocking turn of events, said they wouldn’t allow the EC to collate the remaining 67 polling station results, insisting that they could not find pink sheets. They then ordered the Constituency Returning Officer, Mr. Vincent Obeng, to declare their candidate as winner of the parliamentary elections.
The Returning Officer told them that he had not finished with the collation, so he had no means of ascertaining who won the elections and by what margin. He pleaded with them to cooperate with him to collate the remaining 67 pink sheets before making any declaration as required by Regulation 43 of C.I. 127, a position that was strongly supported by the NPP representatives, including the parliamentary candidate, Akua Afriyie, who was present.
The NDC would however have none of that, as they insisted that their candidate, Ewurabena Aubynn, had won and should be declared as such. This resulted in a misunderstanding whereupon the NDC representatives invited their party thugs who had massed up at the EC regional office to force their way into the collation centre, which they did, after they had overpowered the security and destroyed facilities belonging to the commission.
As widely captured in videos that are in circulation, the NDC thugs threatened to beat up the Returning Officer and kill him if he failed to declare their candidate as the winner. Fearing for his life, Mr. Vincent Obeng, the Returning Officer, gave in to their demands, except that, because he had not finished with the collation, he could not and did not mention any figure or percentages obtained by the candidates.
The Returning Officer, in response to what the NDC hoodlums had ordered him to do amid the threat on his life, only said, “I declare you as the winner”, without even mentioning the name of the candidate nor the number of votes obtained by any of the candidates as required by law. Equally, the parliamentary results summary sheet could not be filled as required by Regulation 43(b) of C.I. 127.
It is therefore not surprising that at a press conference held on Friday, December 13, the Electoral Commission, through its Deputy Chair, Samuel Tettey, stated emphatically that there was no declaration of the Ablekuma North Constituency parliamentary results because the collation was incomplete.
Indeed, the Commission has maintained that all purported declarations of parliamentary results made under duress as was seen in Ablekuma North and in some other constituencies, are not in conformity with the laid down processes enshrined in C.I. 127, hence, illegal and would not be upheld by the EC.
The collation in these outstanding constituencies, particularly Ablekuma North, according to the EC, will soon resume, which exercise will confirm that, Akua Afriyie, indeed, won the Ablekuma North parliamentary elections by a 414 vote margin.