The chairman of Ghana's Independent
Electoral Commission Kojo Afari-Djan is expected to officially declare the
winner of Sunday's presidential run-off election Tuesday. The run-off was
between Nana Akufu Addo of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and John
Atta-Mills of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC). Neither
party garner the over 50 percent of the minimum votes needed to win the
December seventh general election. Most independent radio and television
stations in Ghana have unanimously projected opposition leader Atta Mills as
the country's next president. But the ruling NPP is sharply disputing the
run-off election results. Korku Anyidoho is the communications director of the
Atta-Mills campaign. He told Peter Clottey the opposition is unhappy with the
new figures the ruling party has been peddling around.
"The
NDC is displeased because figures that came in yesterday from certain
constituencies in the Ashanti region that and the different figures that are
coming in from those same constituencies and obviously the numbers have been
up. We already have a problem with the kind of figures that are coming from the
Ashanti region, but even then the NDC is prepared to work with it. Then
suddenly strange figures started coming from the Ashanti region again and that
is the source of concern for the NDC," Anyidoho pointed out.
He
said there are suspicions surrounding what he described as bloating figures in
the Ashanti region, the strong hold of the ruling party.
"If
you are looking at a ridiculous percentage already, you are having around 85,
86, 87 percentage voter turnouts in the Ashanti region alone as compared to the
national average that is already a problem. Suddenly, you are now having 99.9
percentage turnouts per the new figures that are being churned out from the
Ashanti region," he said.
Anyidoho
said the opposition NDC overwhelmingly won eight out of Ghana's 10 regions,
which he said should make the party's presidential candidate the winner of
Sunday's election run-off vote.
"Professor
Mills has won regions and even in Akufu-Addo's home region of the Eastern
region, the NDC got about 40 percent. So, why are we going to sit down to allow
one region to hijack the presidency? It is not going to happen. I mean assuming
the numbers even existed, and so one region would take out the eight or nine
regions, we have no problems. But obviously this attempt to use one region to
arm-twist the democratic process is something that we are finding it very
difficult to accept," Anyidoho pointed out.
He
said the opposition party expects its presidential candidate to be officially
declared winner of the run-off election Tuesday.
"Dr.
Afari-Djan has a reputation and we hope that he would not sacrifice his
reputation on the order of some parochial political expediency. And so, we
expect that today, Dr. Afari-Djan going by the results and the figures that have come out and are
already in the public domain that he would declare that professor Mills is the
president elect of the republic of Ghana," he noted.
Meanwhile
the ruling NPP said some of the results in its stronghold needed to be corrected
after errors were detected. Stephen Asamoah-Baoteng, Ghana's information
minister said told VOA that Ghanaians should wait for the electoral commission
to declare the winner of the run-off.
"Obviously,
everybody knows that the results are declared by the electoral commission, and
not by political parties or radio stations. Radio stations and television
networks can call in results, but they are only provisional until the EC
(Electoral Commission) has certified and declared it. Some radio stations have
taken it upon themselves to declare results themselves without giving the
caveat that those are provisional results. So, they've declared that the
opposition has won," Asamoah-Baoteng noted.
He
said there are still some votes to be properly authenticated by the electoral
commission.
"There
are about 18 constituencies yet to be certified. The electoral commission has
not come out and they (opposition) apparently want to celebrate. So, this is
the problem," he said.
Asamoah-Baoteng
denied the ruling party is trying to "massage" some of the election results,
arguing that some mistakes were made, which he said needed to be corrected.
"Well,
I don't know who has been saying that (accusation), but polling stations
results are obviously declared at the stations. But sometimes you do have
problems for instance in my constituency, some figures that were meant for the
NPP were put in front of the NDC until somebody noticed it, and you could see
clearly that the figures were then canceled and changed. And so the electoral
officers obviously sometimes make mistakes so I don't know why they
(opposition) has not waited for the electoral commission. The results that came
from some areas have not been challenged anywhere. So, why would others be
challenging and there is a question about it?" Asamoah-Baoteng asked.
He
sharply denied that the ruling party is refusing to accept defeat and hand over
power as is being speculated by some.
"The
question is who is holding power and who doesn't want to hand over power?
Election results are declared by the electoral commission so that is the
problem with the opposition. They have put out propaganda machinery that they
have won using provisional figures that they got by some radio stations. So,
through that they think that somebody doesn't want to hand over power," he
said.