The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has taken on the leadership of the Electoral Commission for announcing the 2020 presidential elections without the results of the Techiman South constituency.
The party strongly believes the addition of that constituency’s figures could have led to an outright second round since the president-elect, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) would not have obtained the absolute majority of 50 percent plus one vote to be declared the winner of the polls.
Results of the polls were declared by the EC without that of the disputed Techiman South constituency explaining that even if all the votes in the area were added to the results of John Dramani Mahama, it would not have changed the outcome of the presidential election.
Already, the NDC has said the Commission’s rush to declare the results despite the widespread concerns the NDC raised about the collated figures and the incontrovertible proof that the election was flawed threatens Ghana’s enviable democracy hence its rejection of the results.
Speaking on The Big Issue, a member of the NDC’s national collation team, Dr. Justice Moses Aheto maintained that, the EC’s inconsistency is a clear indication of falsification of figures used in the determination of the final results.
“Even the EC’s own table cannot support the figure used to declare the results. Clearly, it means that there is a systematic manipulation of the figures. If you add the figures, you will get 13,121,111 from the EC’s own table. So, why is that the single process that was used for the results keeps changing? These are documents put out in public by the EC. There are a lot of shocks. If three different denominators are used to calculate the results of the same election, then where are we going? It is a very dangerous precedent. It has not happened before where the EC will declare the results of a final vote and come back and say, I have changed it”, he lamented.
The credibility of the results released by the electoral management body has been questioned by a section of the public following arithmetic disparities in the presidential results.
It follows the revision of the total valid votes declared by the EC on December 9, 2020, where EC Chairperson, Jean Mensa announced wrong figures for the valid votes cast as well as the percentage of votes president-elect, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo had.
The Commission subsequently amended the error in different press statements.
But more worrying to Dr. Aheto was the fact that the EC’s irresponsible exclusion of the results of the Techiman South constituency in the Bono East Region in the computation of the final results.
He explained the party’s independent calculations based on the EC’s own data suggest that assumingly adding all votes cast in the constituency to that already obtained by its candidate, John Mahama as stated by the EC, would have pushed the presidential elections into a runoff.
“The EC made it clear that they have not added Techiman South figures which is 128,018 and said even if they give the whole of that to Mahama, there was no way, he would have won. But if you do the percentage computation, Nana Addo would have obtained 49.265% while Mahama would have obtained 46.76% of the valid votes cast. This is a straight run-off. This is where the issue is. One of the strong but very irresponsible statements they made was that the [excuslion] does not change the percentage stated for each candidate and the declaration made by the chairperson. No matter what, once you change the denominator, you can’t get the same percentages”, he argued.
