NPP pursuing justice on behalf of Ghanaians – Jake

Mr. Jake Obetsebi Lamptey, National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party, (NPP) on Wednesday admonished Ghanaians to be more concerned about the plight of voters rather than the Electoral Commission whose only duty among others is to count and announce results of elections.

He explained that Ghana’s democracy would in the future face a huge challenge in making any meaningful change of government through the ballot box if concerns of the voter were allowed to be swept under the carpet.

Mr. Obetsebi Lamptey gave the advice when he addressed the media at a press conference in Accra to update them on the NPP’s recent activities in pursuit of justice and the status of the petition brought before the Supreme Court of Ghana by three distinguished members of the party.

He said the NPP was pursuing justice not merely for the more than 5 million people who voted for the party and not also for the glory of its presidential candidate, Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo, but on behalf of all Ghanaians and Africans across the continent who were watching the case and looking to Ghana to pave the way forward.

“Our nation has always been at the forefront of democratic change and political progress, and we are confident that the wisdom and foresight of our justices will make our beacon of democracy shine even brighter.

“Elections, we insist, are about those who cast the votes and not those who count, record or declare. This case is necessary for renewing public confidence in our elections, hence, our democracy.  We have presented before the court what we believe to be incontrovertible”, he said.

He said it was important that everyone understood that the election, the inauguration, and the Supreme Court case were linked together by the Constitution, and so long as the NPP followed the letter of the law in the Constitution, those three events could not be separated but were linked together by the rule of law.

The National Chairman explained that all Ghanaians and the world must remember at all times that the President’s inauguration last Monday was not a point of no return.

“A declaration by the Supreme Court that the election of the President is not valid shall be without prejudice to anything done by the President before the declaration”.

“What this means is that the Court can declare, as we are confident that they will do in the interest of justice shortly, that the election of December 7 and 8, when corrected for invalid and fraudulent votes,  would actually result in the victory of Nana Akufo-Addo”, he said.

Mr. Obetsebi Lamptety said the Supreme Court was the final arbiter of all electoral disputes and that the Court would be able to deliberate in a national environment of peace without any threat of violence whatsoever.

Indeed, the many frustrated voters who feel that their sovereign will has been violated have been patient, because they are expecting justice to be done by the Supreme Court, he said.

He added that the NPP was contesting the elections on five categories that invalidated votes, all of which were drawn from the pink sheets.

“We have over 24,000 of them, on which we have conducted a painstaking analysis which include over voting, voting without verification, lack of Electoral Commission signature, “Ghost” polling stations, mismatching words and numbers”, he said.

The NPP National Chairman said with all five categories combined, over 1,342,000 votes will be invalidated, explaining that one  in every eight votes declared by the EC were invalid.

He said by the Electoral Commission’s declaration of the results, only 300,000 votes separated the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the NPP candidates in the EC announcement, yet that sum, plus 1,000,000 more, would be invalidated by the evidence on the pinksheets.

He said considering that, only 150,000 invalid Mahama votes were required to push the NDC candidate below 50 per cent and therefore force a runoff, yet nearly six times that amount had been identified as invalid Mahama votes.

He said only 520,000 invalid Mahama votes were required to give Nana Akufo-Addo a one-touch victory outright, yet nearly double that amount had been identified.

According to Mr. Obetsebi Lamptey, more than 200,000 invalid votes were detected which did not contain the EC signature on the pink sheet, about 400,000 invalid votes cast without verification, 600,000 invalid votes cast due to over voting and more votes were recorded than the number of ballots distributed in a polling station

He said 12 per cent of the votes were invalid and 127,000 votes the EC declared were mistakes

“The EC certainly did not explain why they chose to annul the results of certain polling stations with minor violations of verification or overvoting, yet over 1.3 million were declared valid without any problem”, he stated.

“We look forward to facing the EC in court, backed by 24,000 of their very own pink sheets. We will prove, just from documented evidence from the EC itself, that over 12 per cent (1.34 million) of votes counted were illegal”, Mr. Obetsebi Lamptey said.

Source: GNA