NPP to challenge North-Tongu presidential results

Ho, Dec. 11, GNA - Mr Moses Mensah Assem, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) parliamentary candidate for the North-Tongu in the Volta Region, on Thursday said he would challenge in court the presidential results declared in the constituency.

"The total votes cast, collated and forwarded to the head office of the EC (Electoral Commission) in Accra was inflated in favour of the National Democratic Congress (NDC)," he alleged.

Mr Assem flanked by Alhaji Rashid Bawa, Ghana's Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Mr Prosper Aggor, North-Tongu Constituency Chairman of the NPP said this at a press conference in Ho.

He claimed that the EC's collated results from the constituency could not be the aggregate of the 91 polling stations figures as presented by the various presiding officers.

Mr Assem also alleged that the Returning Officer at the collation centre at Juapong, orchestrated the fraud with active connivance of NDC functionaries in the constituency.

According to him, the Returning Officer tampered with the results in favour of the NDC so that the manual figures of the presidential votes which were 26,009 for the NDC rose to 26,328 on the computer and the figure sent to Accra also rose to 26,356.

"All these inconsistencies were calculated to deliberately increase the presidential votes in favour of the NDC," Mr Assem stated. Mr Assem said the discrepancies could not be due to transposition errors, but were premeditated ploys to cheat, giving many other instances of figures recorded on the declaration forms, deliberately raised while being recorded on other documents in the collating process. Asked if party agents were not around, Mr Assem claimed supporters of the NDC intentionally created riotous scenes during counting of the votes at polling stations and the collation centres.

Mr Aggor said his yam farm at Juapong was destroyed besides. Dr Archibald Letsa, NPP candidate for Ho-Central, who lost the elections, said the vigilance of the NPP in the constituency reduced cheating to the barest minimum.

"Ho-Central was part of Ghana where all political parties should have free access," he said.

He said threats would not deter him from organising NPP activists to be vigilant in the run-off. Dr Letsa expressed misgivings about the efficiency levels of some of the security personnel at the polling stations during the December 7 elections and appealed to them to do much better in the second round..