The NDC has rebuffed claims by the main opposition party, NPP at its hurriedly arranged news conference on the controversy about the electronic transmission of votesin the December polls.
Deputy General Secretary of the NDC, Koku Anyidoho says the NPP is being haunted by guilty conscience after the Electoral Commission and other political parties exposed the mischief it tried to play with false alarms.
Campaign Manager of the NPP, Peter Mac Manu earlier this week cautioned the EC against adopting the e-transmission of electoral results unless it secures legal backing. Mr Manu’s statement triggered another round of complaints and accusations by NPP communicators that the EC was smuggling in a policy to help rig the elections for the ruling party.
NPP Campaign Manager, Peter Mac Manu, says they were not invited to sit in when the five companies that have been shortlisted to be considered for the contract were invited by the EC to demonstrate their software.
But the EC has since produced documents signed by Kwabena Agyapong, then General Secretary of the NPP, Johnson Asiedu Nketia on behalf of the NDC, other smaller parties and Civil Society organizations including the Institute of Economic Affairs, IEA.
On Thursday, the NPP told a news conferenceamong other things that, they did not know anything about the electronic transmission of votes for this elections. The partyexplained that it had only agreed that hand-held scan machines be used to scan results as tabulated or collated at the constituencies for onward transmission to the national collation center.
This, John Boadu, acting General Secretary of the party noted is different from scanning or whatever of results at the polling station.
“It is not a question of whether we need that technology or not, it’s a question of even agreeing whether we need that technology or not” he added.
But the governing NDC is accusing the NPP of hypocrisy after it had earlier stated publicly that it was not involved in the decision to transmit the December 7 polls results electronically.
Deputy Chief Scribe of the party, Koku Anyidoho, who spoke on Accra based OKAY FM on Friday, observed that theidea to use the electronic medium, adopted by Ghana’s electoral body, was suggested by the NPP at an Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting.
“This whole e-Transmission thing was the brainchild of the NPP, led then by former Chairman, late Jake Obetsebi Lamptey” he told host of the programme, Kwame Etikesie.of Okayfm Friday.
“I am happy that at least the NPP has now admitted that it knows about the electronic transmission of results. Mac Manu was all over the place saying that the party knew nothing about this electronic transmission thing and that the EC was up to mischief. But you see, the NPP has lost credibility. This is a party that came to tell the whole world that there were about a million names of foreigners on our register. They produced a fictitious document claiming that it was a Togolese Voters Register which proved that many registered Togolese voters also have their names on Ghana’s voters register. It was supposed to be “10% of work-in-progress”, and that in a couple of days, he Dr Bawumia who presented NPP’s claims, was going to produce the extra “90% of the work-in-progress”, from, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Benin, Ivory Coast, etc., to prove to Ghanaians that Ghana’s voters register was over-bloated with “foreigners”.
He told OKAY FM he is not surprised at all that the NPP has lied again. Mr Anyidoho further stated that he’s convinced the NPP and their constant heckling of the EC is a way of preparing the minds of their supporters for a defeat in the upcoming elections.
NPP has expressed grave concerns over what it has described as a deliberate attempt by the Electoral Commission (EC) to keep it at bay in decisions regarding the electronic transmission of the December 2016 election results.
The EC however insists the NPP and other political parties were involved in the lead-up to the decision. It also says NPP’s Campaign Manager, who is a member of the Legal Committee of IPAC, was part of the decision makers.
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