NDC National Elections Directorate sets records straight
Mr Bede A. Ziedeng, Acting Director of Elections of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) on Thursday denied allegations that the National Elections Directorate, headed by Mr Ofosu Ampofo failed to collate the 2016 presidential results.
Mr Ziedeng said the Directorate duly collated all the results, which was compiled by members of the Directorate as it does every election year, and that, the collated results are available for verification at the headquarters.
He was addressing a press conference in Accra to correct media report suggesting that the Directorate did not collate the results of the 2016 presidential elections.
“Even at the time former President John Mahama made his concession speech, the National Elections Directorate had collated the results of over 235 constituencies.
“The collation of results was duly carried out and indeed the National Elections Directorate continuously furnished the NDC representatives in the electoral Commissions Strong Room with collated results until the final declaration.
He said after official declaration of results, the Elections Directorate, under its former Director Mr Ampofo, started a process of retrieving all the pink sheets from the polling stations in the country for the post-declaration verification and analysis.
“The Directorate was waiting for the Electoral Commission to gazette the polling station results, so that we could compare the figures. To date the EC has failed to gazette the polling station results, and so no opportunity for verification,” he explained.
“We had parliamentary candidates in all the 275 constituencies. None of them has complained about non-collation of results. Even those challenging the election results rely on our collated results,” he added.
He said the allegations were media propaganda to tarnish the reputation of members of the Directorate, adding that, “members of the National Elections Directorate is made up of experienced and hardworking people, who will never allow anything untoward to happen to the party”.
“It is this same Elections Directorate, which was compelled to move around the whole country to all the polling stations to retrieve and assemble all the pink sheets to help mount a credible defence when the New Patriotic Party filed the Election petition in 2012.
“It is therefore factually inaccurate for anyone to claim that the Elections Directorate or the Director of Elections did not or failed to collate the results of the 2016 presidential elections, when indeed the facts point to the contrary,” he added.
He said the fact the private infrastructure deployed to collate results directly from the polling stations crashed soon after it was deployed “does not mean that no results were collated, eventually the party had to fall back on the National Elections Directorate for the collation of the results.”
Source: GNA