Kingsley Ntow Addo Addressing the media at the press conference
Management of printing and packaging company, Innolink Ghana Limited, which is at the centre of a raging controversy over alleged attempts to manipulate the 2016 general election, yesterday mounted a strong defence against the accusation.
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) on Monday raised concerns about the sneaking out of a plate used in printing ballot papers for the December 7 presidential poll from the production house of Innolink – one of the printing houses contracted by the Electoral Commission (EC) to print ballot papers for the elections – to an unknown person.
The plot was uncovered Monday evening by some party agents stationed at the printing house to supervise the printing and dispatching process of the ballot sheets to their final destinations.
At a press conference at the company’s premises located at the North Industrial Area in Accra yesterday, Business Development Manager of Innolink, Kingsley Ntow Addo insisted, “No plate of the presidential ballots had been given out by any officer of Innolink Ghana Limited.”
Defence
He explained, “At around 1:52pm on Monday, 21st November, 2016, Innolink was approached by Aero Vote Limited to assist it with the exposure of only one printing plate for the printing of the Statement of Poll, famously referred to as Pink Sheet.
”This request was necessitated by the fact that Aero Vote, the company contracted by the EC to print the Pink Sheets, had issues with some of their production machines and could not afford to take the plate to the UK, which is the home country of the company due to the pressures of time.”
Owing to the urgency of the request, Ntow Addo indicated, “The management of Innolink consented to assist Aero Vote to expose the plate since Innolink remains one of the few security printing companies in Ghana with plate-baking machine.
“The plate was duly exposed and the completed job was handed over to a representative of Aero Vote at 5:17 pm who duly left with it. There was no security breach,” as has been alleged and that the Production Manager, one Martin Anderson, was cleared by the company’s security before he handed over the plate to the Aero Vote official.
Justification
Considering the fact that the printing process is under close 24-hour monitoring by the National Security, police, BNI, EC and political party representatives, he claimed, “It is therefore, impossible for anyone to collude with anybody to compromise the security of the printing process.”
He however, admitted that the company did not inform agents of the various political parties or any member of the security agencies monitoring the printing of the ballot papers who had been stationed at the premises.
Contrary to the claim that the police were investigating the matter following an official complaint lodged at the Cantonments Police Station by the NPP, Ntow Addo said nothing of that kind had happened since the police had not been to the premises of the company.
A day after the allegation was made, he revealed that a meeting was held at the conference room of Innolink Limited, which was attended by the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Charlotte Osei and her team, management of Innolink, political party representatives and personnel of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI).
During the said meeting, the Innolink Business Development Manager related, “Representatives of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) said their report to the Director of Elections of the NPP did not state that the plate sent out was a presidential ballot plate,” a claim this paper cannot independently confirm.
Assurance
But management of Innolink insisted, “We have done nothing untoward in this matter” because the plates used in printing the presidential ballot papers remain intact and would be destroyed in the presence of the security agencies and agents of the political parties on November 24, 2016.”
Apart from that, Mr Ntow Addo said they had no reason to prefer one political party to the other because as a private sector operator that deals with all governments, they could not take sides, whiles assuring, “We at Innolink are resolute in our commitment to ensuring that the integrity of the electoral process remains intact.”
By Charles Takyi-Boadu