Chairman of the Electoral Commission has explained in court his refusal to grant a request by the Chairman of the New Patriotic Party intended to postpone the announcement of the 2012 presidential election results on grounds of detected irregularities.
On December 9th 2012, NPP Chairman Jake Obetsebi Lamptey reportedly wrote to the EC to request for two things.
The letter read in court called for:
1. Cause an audit of the verification machine to ensure it tallied with what happened.
2. Order a recollation of ballots at the constituency level to establish the true credibility of the results being declared.
Dr. Afari Gyan who is also the returning officer in the 2012 presidential elections said soon after receiving the said letter, the NPP chairman and other unnamed officials of the party came to his office.
He said in the presence of his two deputies a meeting was held to allow the NPP chairman who is also the third petitioner to explain his request.
In his response, Dr. Afari Gyan said he told the NPP Chairman that auditing verification machines would take months to complete. This meant the announcement of the results would be delayed.
“What you are asking me to do will take months at the earliest to do,” he reportedly told Jake Obetsebi Lamptey.
He added that because there were no protests at the various polling stations it was going to be difficult to honour the request.
The witness said soon after, the Chairman of the Peace Council called him and requested another meeting to further examine concerns by the NPP Chairman.
He revealed it “was not a small meeting”. It involved a “rather big” delegation of the Peace council, all his seven commissioners, senior party officials of all the parties and persons unrelated to the parties.
He said the Chairman of the Peace Council asked the NPP Chairman to lay bare his complaints.
The NPP chairman provided pink sheets for seven constituencies as evidence of allegations of discrepancies.
The seven commissioners then retired to consider the legitimacy of the evidence presented.
Every constituency is supposed to have a number of pink sheets to make up total results of the constituency.
But he said in five constituencies, the pink sheet produced were less than the total number of polling stations in those constituencies.
In the case of the other two constituencies they brought more pink sheets than there were in those constituencies.
Dr. Afari Gyan said after scrutinizing the evidence the commissioners came to the conclusion that the allegations of discrepancy was “not sufficient”.
On that basis “I will go ahead and announce as soon as the results are ready”, Dr. Afari Gyan said.
Source: Myjoyonline.com
