The leader and founder of the All People Congress (APC), Mr Hassan Ayariga has wondered why the National Democratic Congress has jumped to the defence of the chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Charlotte Osei.
The main opposition NDC has blamed the president, Nana Akufo-Addo for recent happenings at the Electoral Commission.
According to the party, it will resist the “blackmail witch-hunting” of the head of the election management body, Charlotte Osei, who was appointed by the former president, John Mahama.
“Stay off intruding into the operations into the activities of the independent EC,” the Minority Leader Haruna Iddrisu said at a press conference organised by the NDC to assess the president’s first six months in office.
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But reacting to the comments by the NDC, Mr Ayariga said: “My concern is I don’t understand why the NDC is defending EC boss and asking the president not to do witch-hunting.”
“I have read the letter or the petition that some group of EC workers sent to the President. I read many of the allegations and I assume that if all these allegations are true, then its very serious…” he told Accra-based Class FM.
“We are told that the EC Chair used Ghc4million to renovate her residence, I think it is on the higher side, without even the approval of the commission, I think it is abuse of power. And then they made mention of she using $4million to award a contract to a company that is associated with her, that is also abuse of power, if it is true.”
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“But my concern here is that, I don’t understand why the NDC as a party, and a group of members of the NDC are defending the EC boss and asking the President not to do witch-hunting…” he said.
Mr Ayariga further believes that those calling on the president to ignore the petition for removal are hypocrites.
“I will call it hypocritical for some institutions like the Peace Council to call on the President to be careful with how he impeach the EC boss.”
“When APC in 2016, the presidential candidate was disqualified without proper reasoning, I did not hear Peace Council coming out to say that the EC should thread cautiously or the EC should be careful because we are practicing multi party democracy and for that matter, we want multi party participation,” he said.
