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The Oforikrom Constituency Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Seidu Awudu, who was declared loser in last Saturday’s delegate conference has threatened to use three river deities to curse the Ashanti Regional Secretary of the Party,  Sam Pyne and the Electoral Commission(EC) if he is not declared  winner to run the affairs of the party.

In a petition addressed to the Regional chairman of the party and copied to the General Secretary, Ag. National Chairman, the Regional Director of the EC and the Ashanti Regional Minister to seek his declaration as validly elected constituency chairman, Mr. Seidu Awudu said, the votes cast for him in the chairmanship election was manipulated by his opponent in connivance with electoral officers.

According to him, he was vetted by a vetting committee of the NPP which qualified him to contest for the position of chairmanship in the Oforikrom constituency on 24th February, 2018, and which was supervised by officers from the EC of Ghana and three – member constituency election committee made up of Mr. Sam Pyne, Mr. Bright, National representative and Mr. Asare Yeboah, constituency representative.

He explained that, all voters for candidates at the venue cast their votes for candidates contesting for seven positions out of the ten positions and that votes cast for the seven positions were counted publicly and winners declared.

Mr. Awudu said, the votes for the chairmanship position were sorted and counted last relative to the other positions starting from the youth organizer position and that total valid cast for the chairmanship position was 898.

Chairman Awudu indicated that, the votes for his opponent, Mr. Abraham Antwi who occupied the first position on the ballot paper were counted and he obtained 391 votes.

According to him, Mr. Abraham Antwi, after knowing his total votes to be less than his ballot of 507 by simple arithmetic, he came to him publicly to congratulate him for winning the elections and left the centre amidst jubilation with the delegates.

He further explained that, the counting of his ballots was stopped midway due an alleged discovery of stacked piles of 60 ballots belonging to his opponent and that brought confrontation at the center and ballot papers were seen scattered on the floor with some torn into pieces as the police and EC officers tried to salvage some of the ballots into the box and transported them to KNUST Police Station without being accompanied election agents.

The chairman said a cast ballot with serial number 0000260 and having EC stamp with serial number EC 5925 and signature of the ballot issuer at the back was recovered the next day after the election at a refuse dump.

For that reason therefore, the former chairman said ballots collected into the ballot box after the confusion did not represent the true reflection of the election by the delegates and therefore should be declared invalid.