Johnson Asiedu Nketiah
General Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, after the party election petition defeat at the Supreme Court challenging the legitimacy of the presidential results and the subsequent winner has petitioned the Inspector General of Police (IGP), George Akuffo Dampare to probe alleged illegal printing of excess presidential ballot papers in the 2020 general elections.
The General Secretary who had come under constant criticism for performing poorly at the Supreme Court wants to use the police petition to shore up its image, demanding a stiff punishment for any offender.
He says any persons found culpable after the probe should be prosecuted.
However, a section of the public believes this is an eye service to redeem his sinking image as he prepares for another election as he is reported to be eyeing another national executive position in the NDC, especially the chairmanship in the impending party elections.
Portion of the petition stated that “I write on behalf of the National Democratic Congress to petition your office to institute criminal investigations into and prosecute persons culpable in the illegal printing of over one million excess presidential ballots meant for the Ashanti Region at Innolink Printing press, one of the seven security printing firms contracted by the Electoral Commission to print election materials for the 2020 presidential and parliamentary elections.”
It further claimed that the petition was occasioned because there had not been any update on investigations on electoral malpractices and violence that characterized the election and voter registration exercise.
“As you aware, the 2020 Presidential and Parliamentary elections were characterized by various acts of violence before, during, and after elections. Indeed, for the first time in Ghana’s electoral history, at least one person lost his life during voter registration and as many as eight others lost their lives in incidents of gun violence involving security personnel with several others sustaining various degrees of injuries.
“We contend that the failure on the part of the police to deal decisively with such heinous crimes portends clear dangers for Ghana’s democracy that all well-meaning Ghanaians and development partners should be concerned about. It is for this reason that we request that the Ghana Police Service provides us updates on the state of investigation and prosecution.”
The NDC is claiming on various platforms that there were electoral malpractices in the last general elections.
Last week, the Electoral Commission (EC) called on the Ghana Police Service to investigate claims by former President John Mahama that there was over-voting in the 2020 general elections.
A Deputy Chairperson of the EC in charge of Corporate Affairs, Dr. Eric Bossman Asare, disputed the claim and appealed to the police to immediately investigate it.
“The former president has said that the EC thumb printed one million ballot papers in favour of the President of the Republic [Nana Akufo-Addo]. This is untrue… This is not a matter that should be ignored, and we call on the Ghana Police Service to investigate it… This is a great matter that undermines the credibility of the electoral process and should not be ignored. We call on him to provide evidence to support this claim,” he stated.
By Vincent Kubi