Kwame Pianim, a stalwart of the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) has denied ever saying his party should not have gone to court to challenge the 2012 presidential results.
He said never in his interview with the Africawatch magazine, did he say or suggest that the party should accept the results as declared by the Electoral Commission without mounting any legal challenge.
“I didn’t say that”, he told XYZ News reporter Osei Owusu Amankwah in an exclusive interview in Accra on Wednesday August 21, 2013.
“I said the party is right to go to court,” he clarified.
“What I didn’t want was the party selecting what activities of the president to boycott and what not to boycott, ok?”
According to him, “the Constitution is very clear. When the Electoral Commission declares an MP a winner [or] a president a winner, they are the winners until reversed and until reversed, you respect and accept that”.
Background
Mr. Pianim took a lot of flak from critics within his own party after a publication by the Africawatch magazine which quoted him as having said the NPP needed courage to confront defeat because “it is good for democracy and the nation”.
According to the magazine, the outspoken politician blamed the party’s loss of the 2012 elections on “intellectual and mental laziness” exhibited by the national executives of the party.
Mr. Pianim, who had reservations about the party’s MPs’ boycott of certain activities involving the President told the magazine that: “Until the Supreme Court reverses the declared results of the 2012 elections, all Ghanaians, including NPP members, must fully recognise President Mahama as the legitimate Head of State of the republic and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces”.
“When the results of an election are announced, we should be ready to accept the results no matter how bitter...the interests of individual members and those of the party sometimes differ,” he averred.
The one-time presidential aspirant added that “the boycott [of the president’s inauguration] somehow portrayed the NPP executives as confused people”.
According to him, “Nana Akufo-Addo technically ceased to be the leader of the NPP on Dec. 9 after the declaration of the results by the electoral commissioner. The NPP as a group is not party to the case pending at the Supreme Court...the case is still the act of three individual members of the party”.
He then suggested that: “I think the national executives should reconsider doing the work we have voted them to do, or leave for others to take over”.
The business economist and investment consultant noted in that interview that: “I think by making a fuss about the court case, the NPP is losing the opportunity to really do a proper review of our performance, which is important for the future successes of our party”.
“It is saddening to see some of what is going on within the NPP. We need to pull back and reset the button of rebuilding the party,” Mr. Pianim bemoaned in the Africawatch magazine interview.
