NPP goes to court over 5 seats

• Posted on December 13, 2016December 13, 2016
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

The leadership of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Western Region is considering a court action to press for a recount of the parliamentary poll in five constituencies in the region.

The party is alleging that some irregularities occurred in the counting and collation of results in the Ellembelle, Aowin, Suaman, Amenfi Central, and Juaboso Constituencies.

All the constituencies in question are largely the strongholds of the NDC, except Ellembelle.

The NPP won eight more seats at the end of the 2016 polls, to take its total to 16, leaving the NDC with 10 – which include the five in contention.

The Western Regional NPP Secretary, Charles Bissue, told Citi Fm, “We are going to court. Tomorrow [Tuesday], the legal team will meet. We’ve called for all the pink sheets in Takoradi so we are going to look at them; but those five seats are Ellembelle, Aowin, Suaman, Amenfi Central and Juaboso. On the 7^th of December when the elections were going on, we had our own plans as to the collation of our results which was piloted in Amenfi West, where we got our results by 6.30 pm – five hours before the EC got its results; so by 7pm we knew which constituencies we had won.”

Mr Charles Bissue said the EC’s confirmation of compromise of its electronic results transmission process called for appropriate measures to be taken to determine the accuracy of the final results declared.

“The EC was inputting the same figures into its system, but at some point the results started changing. Thankfully, Charlotte Osei [EC Chairperson] said their system had been compromised; and I think she actually agreed with us so we are going to court, open the ballot boxes and go for manual count,” he added.

NDC Reacts

However, the Western Regional Secretary of the NDC, Joe Nelson, has called on the public to ignore the claims of the NPP, saying the latter party has no basis for its demands.

According to him, the NDC won genuinely in the recently held poll in the constituencies in question.

He recalled that in a constituency like Amenfi Central, which is being contested by the NPP, the NDC won after an open recount requested by the NDC.