2016 polls: I’ll never forget how EC treated me – Nduom

Even though the 2016 elections is over, the 2016 flag bearer of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP), Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom, has said that he will never forget the treatment meted out to him by the Electoral Commission (EC) which became his lowest point in the run-up to the polls.

Dr Nduom was one of 13 aspirants initially disqualified from contesting in the 2016 elections over alleged illegalities on their nomination forms.

Dr Nduom, according to the EC, was disqualified because “the number of subscribers to his forms did not meet the requirements of Regulation 7 (2) (b) of CI 94”.

He sued the EC and an Accra High Court on Friday, 28 October, ordered the election-conducting body to allow him make the necessary corrections on his nomination forms for the December 7 presidential race.

The disqualification, he said, affected the party as it lost steam in the campaign.

Commenting on the issue as he indicated that it was one of the lowest points in his political career, he told Eezy FM in an interview on Monday, June 19: “What they did, led by the chairperson Mrs Charlotte Osei, was something illegal clearly, was something premeditated and in my view something that was designed to favour certain candidates…

“For me it was the lowest point and those people who participated in it, they must understand that yes, as a man who relies on my faith, I can forgive their actions and I have forgiven their actions, but I will never forget their actions.”

For him, the country must not allow individuals appointed to places of authority to circumvent laws in order to achieve their own ulterior motives, insisting: “We must never allow anybody that we have given authority by way of laws to set the laws aside or come up with illegal interpretations and do what they want to do in order to satisfy certain objectives that they know.”

“It is what made me ask myself, ‘why bother?’ When there are laws in the country but human beings that are put there to ensure that the laws are administered correctly without favour to anyone, decide that they will use their own selective means to determine which part of the law they will obey and which part they wouldn’t obey and who by their judgement was fit to become presidential candidate and who was not fit to become presidential candidate and to come up with an artificial means of deciding how many people should be allowed to contest in an election,” he added.