E-transmission of election results: NPP lacks credibility - Nketia

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has gained notoriety for kicking against decisions taken at the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) of the Electoral Commission (EC), a committee the NPP is part of, hence should be ignored on the matter of the electronic transmission of election results in the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has said.

It will be recalled that the campaign manager of the NPP in this year’s elections, Mr Peter Mac Manu, recently accused the EC of not adequately briefing the NPP about the e-transmission process.

Mr Mac Manu had said: “No political party or civil society organisation has received invitation from the EC to attend the demonstration [of the transmission process].”

He said on Sunday July 31 that the EC had not been able to convince the country why it intended to conduct e-transmission of poll results in December. “First, there is no law which gives the EC the mandate to electronically transmit results, nothing in the law before parliament now. C.I. 94 makes mention of it. Also, the law talks about the EC receiving all the collated results from the Statement of Poll and Declaration of Results (pink sheets) signed by party agents at the constituency level, and the expectation is that they will be brought to the national collation centre before the winner of the presidential race will be declared,” he said.

But the election management body rejected the claims of Mr Mac Manu, indicating that the party was adequately informed about the decision to transmit the result electronically.

Siding with the EC that the NPP was aware of the decision, Mr Asiedu Nketia, who is the representative of the NDC at IPAC, at a press conference at the NDC headquarters in Accra Wednesday August 3, said the NPP was fully aware of the decision to transmit the results electronically because the decision came up at an IPAC meeting.

He said: “NPP has now gained notoriety for kicking against decisions of IPAC which they were part of. We [NDC] wish to tell the NPP in plain language that they should let their ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and ‘no’ be ‘no’ in order to save the little remaining integrity left in that disorganised and disintegrated party. They should also know that discerning Ghanaians are getting impatient with their double standards and if they don’t mend their ways, the nation will move on with or without them.”