A Koforidua High Court, presided over by Mr Justice G. E. Twum, has granted an interlocutory injunction restraining the Electoral Commission (EC) from gazzetting the Akwatia Constituency parliamentary election result.
The order followed an ex-parte motion filed by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) parliamentary candidate for Akwatia in the December 7 Parliamentary election, Mr Mohammed Ahmed Jamal, praying the court for an order of perpetual injunction to restrain the Electoral Commission (EC) from gazzetting Mr Kinston Kissi, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) parliamentary candidate, as the member of Parliament for the Akwatia Constituency.
In an affidavit filed on behalf of the applicant by the Law Trust Company in Accra, Mr Jamal also sought for a perpetual injunction by the court to restrain Mr Kissi from holding himself out as the elected member of Parliament for Akwatia,
Mohammed further prayed the court to order the EC to re-count all the votes cast in the said constituency during the December 7 parliamentary election and the declaration of the candidate with the highest number of votes as the winner.
In his statement of claim, Mohammed stated that at a lot of polling stations, including the Dwenase Presby Primary polling station and the Kusi Methodist Church polling stations, his monitoring agents were chased away when it was time for counting the votes cast.
According to the statement, counting went on without the monitoring agents of Mr Jamal. As a result he was credited with fewer votes whilst the NPP candidate was credited with hundreds of votes, adding that at some polling stations, some of the figures were actually interchanged.
“More specifically, at the Tokorase and Zongo Primary “A” polling stations, I obtained 171 and 165 votes respectively as against 168 and 134 respectively for the NPP candidate but rather strangely when the votes were being collated at the collation centre, my said votes were wrongly interchanged with that of the second respondent. Although I protested vehemently, I was rebuffed and the figures were made to stand,; he emphasised.
The statement continued that at the Addaekrom and the Abrosuso polling stations, the presiding officer rejected a lot of votes belonging to Mr Mohammed on the grounds that blue ink was used in thumb-printing the ballot papers instead of black ink.
“This was very strange, since the station itself provided the said blue pad for voters to use. As a result of this, a lot of my votes were rejected,” Mr Mohammed Jamal stressed.
The statement said at the Tokorase Methodist Church polling station, Mr Mohammed obtained 214 votes as against 28 votes by the NPP candidate but at the collation centre, the votes of the NPP candidate were increased from 28 to 228 as against his 214 votes.
Other polling stations which Mr Mohammed claimed that his polling agents were intimidated and for that matter he was robbed included the Apinto polling station, the Boadua Motokoli Mosque polling station, and the Boadua Post Office polling among others.
The statement said it is of these blatant illegal, wrongful and oppressive acts that enabled the NPP candidate to be declared the winner.
“If the EC had allowed a re-count of the actual votes cast and some of its presiding officers had not condoned and aided the second respondent and had done a proper collation of the votes cast at the polling stations, I, and not the second respondent, would have been declared as the winner of the election he said.
The applicant said the EC was wrong in not ordering a re-count of the votes cast in the Akwatia constituency and prayed the court to order it to do a re-count of the votes to set the records straight.
