EC to investigate attempts to sign pink sheets

The Electoral Commission (EC) says it will investigate why its Returning Officer at Savelugu in the Northern Region asked Presiding Officers to validate some unsigned pink sheets containing records of voting in the 2012 election.

Acting Public Affairs Director at the EC, Mr. Christian Owusu Parry, told Joy FM’s Super Morning Show Monday that the Commission was in the process of inviting its officers who were arrested Sunday and later granted bail in respect of the case, to Accra to explain their actions.


He said the Commission was concerned that the officers involved did not exercise good judgment in their attempt to obtain post-facto signatures on the Pink Sheets, especially given that the outcome of the elections was being challenged in a court of law.


The Pink Sheets contains records of; the number of ballots issued at a polling station on voting day, the total number of votes, the ballot account and the number of votes obtained by each candidate in an election. All Pink Sheets have to be signed by the presiding officer of the polling station.


Sunday the police in Savelugu arrested three EC officers for attempting to procure signatures to validate some Pink Sheets that were not signed by Presiding Officers at the close of polls in December last year.


The arrest followed an alarm raised by supporters of the opposition New Patriotic Party which is alleging fraud in the election.


The party has petitioned the Supreme Court of Ghana to nullify the declaration of President John Dramani Mahama as the winner of the last year’s election.

Mr Owusu Parry said because the case is in court, the officers ought to have been careful and not do anything that would create the impression that evidence was being tampered with.


He, however, insisted that the attempt to sign the unsigned Pink Sheets did not go to core of the case in court because it did not involve the doctoring of the figures on the sheets.


Mr. Parry said although some Pink Sheets may have been left unsigned, that did not invalidate the votes from those polling stations because the sheets were endorsed by agents of the candidates in the elections.


Communication Director of the NPP, Nana Akomea disagreed.


He said the attempt to validate the Pink Sheets was the clearest testament to the validity of the issues raised by the three NPP leaders – Nana Akufo-Addo, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia and Jake Obtsebi-Lamptey in their petition to the Supreme Court.


He said a major plank of the NPP’s case was that thousands of Pink Sheets had not been signed as required by the electoral laws of the country and were therefore invalid.

The belated attempt to sign them, he said, was to right the wrong which the NPP was pointing to.


He said it was curious that the EC, which in its response to the petition denied that some Pink Sheets had been considered valid even though they were unsigned, was now seeking to procure signatures on the sheets.


He said the petitioners would notify the Supreme Court of the attempt to tamper with evidence in the custody of the EC.


Nana Akomea expressed gratitude to the NPP supporters whose vigilance led to the arrests but urged them not to take the law into their own hands but allow the security agencies to do their work.