Ralph Apetorgbor
The Collation Team of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has reacted angrily to queries from high ranking members of the party about its performance during the December 7 polls.
Palpably pained about the insinuations of poor performance from the party gurus, the team pointed out that “it is very abysmal for anyone and even more hurtful for a high ranking member of the party to insinuate that such efforts which were put in yielded negative results.”
In a statement signed by the team’s secretary, Ralph Apetorgbor, the collation procedures in the party had been let out unambiguously.
Results were being communicated to the party’s representatives at the strong room from the wee hours of December 8, 2020, the statement explained, adding that it was regrettable that pink sheets meant to be audited were said to have been lost in the process.
The team states that “without an iota of equivocation, this statement is nothing but palpable falsehood and that the auditing exercise was done with the exhibition of the strictest forms of professionalism.”
While giving a thumbs-up to its performance in last year’s general elections and describing the collation process as efficient and without blemish, it subtly sympathized with the NDC as it states that “we know the pains that accompany the loss of an election. We must be very guided in these times.”
The party should, the election loss pain notwithstanding, “remain focused on how to stay united as a party for the tasks ahead.”
Although IT professionals must not engage in, as the statement put it “ill technology perceptions” due to the solid training they have received in information security and management, “it is prudent to set the records straight.”
The collation system as put in place for the 2020 Polls, the team asserted “was one of the most robust and cognitive systems ever built for any collation exercise in Ghana.”
The system used for the election, the team explained, was “underpinned by 11 micro services – from application monitoring, results matching & inconsistency flagging to cognition.”
Results were collated timely and allowing for prediction of how many parliamentary seats were to the credit of the NDC, the collation team added.
Parallel computing and transmission channels were engaged and so should there be disengagement of one channel the anomaly could not impugn negatively the collation exercise.
Lashing out at its critics even further, the statement pointed out that “to even suggest that the system was an ‘Excel System’ even showed that the proponents of this absurd agenda had little or no information on the length and breadth of the system deployed.”
Continuing to extol the performance of the team, the statement stressed that some of the finest brains in the IT industry were involved in the collation of the results, an exercise which it added, entailed planning, analysis and design to engineering.
The collation team’s reaction is a gauge of how much flak it has suffered at the hands of highly placed NDC personalities as they seek to find a vent for their election defeat frustration.
The collation team presented an appropriate punching bag, given its assignment of results transmission and above all matters related to the pink sheet and the eventual results declaration.
The election petition hearing and the judgment thereof revealed a number of shortcomings in the party’s collation management. With the collation team’s convincing explanation, the party’s management might consider another vent to let out its frustration.
By A.R. Gomda