Rejected ballot in Speaker election deliberate – Ben Ephson

Popular Ghanaian pollster, Ben Ephson says the single rejected ballot counted in the race to elect the Speaker of Ghana’s 8th Parliament may have been a deliberate act by a New Patriotic Party Member of Parliament.

In the scheme of things, the Speaker of Ghana’s 8th Parliament was supposed to be the nominee of the New Patriotic Party side.

In the election which was expected to be fought on party lines, the NPP was relying on its 137 MPs and the declared support of the Independent Member of Parliament for Fomena, Andrew Amoako Asiamah to pull a single vote lead in securing a win against the NDC with which it has an equal number of MPs.

However, when the results were counted after the chaotic elections, the NDC nominee, Alban Sumani Kingsford Bagbin somehow managed to beat Professor Aaron Mike Oqauye, nominated by the NPP to win the Speaker race.

Even though the Clerk of Parliament announcing the results failed to give out figures, some NDC MPs had already claimed victory saying their candidate based on the counting of ballots had obtained 138 votes against 136 votes obtained by Professor Oqauye whiles a single ballot was counted as rejected.

In an interview during GhanaWeb TV’s coverage of the Speaker elections, Ben Ephson said he believes the rejected ballot may have been a deliberate act by an NPP MP who wanted to ease his conscience from voting against his party’s nominee.

He also underscored that he picked intelligence indicating the NDC leadership initiated an overture with some NPP MPs ahead of the election.

“I am sure that person who did the rejected ballot was to ease his conscience: that he didn’t vote for Bagbin and he didn’t vote for the NPP nominee. I am sure the rejected ballot was clearly a delibrate act to reduce the NPP votes by one,” he said.

“I knew, I had heard that the NDC had made certain overtures to some of the NPP MPs. Some of them had reported to the (parties) leadership and they didn’t know others who wouldn’t report,” he added.

According to Mr Ephson, the alleged promise of an NPP MP to either vote for the NDC nominee or spoil his ballot influenced to the NDC’s insistence on the casting ballots in secret, a situation that caused chaos on several occasions during the process.

The race to find Ghana’s 8th Speaker of Parliament went through a long night beginning from midnight of Wednesday, January 7, 2021, and ended around 9:00 am Thursday, January 7, 2021, in a process which would have ordinarily lasted a few hours before the break of dawn.

The process was characterized by several incidences of chaos and disagreements between the New Patriotic Party side and the National Democratic Congress side of the house.

Mr. Bagbin was eventually declared the winner of the race after votes were eventually counted in yet another chaotic manner that lasted for hours.

The New Speaker following his successful election was sworn in by the Chief Justice and subsequently took his position to swear in members of the 8th Parliament of Ghana’s Fourth Republic.