Why Kpessa-Whyte did not speak to Jean Mensa

Dr. Michael Kpessa-Whyte, the second witness for the petitioner challenging the election results in 2020 polls, has told the Supreme Court that contrary to assertions, he did not personally interact with Jean Mensah, the EC Chairperson, during the national collation of results.

Kpessa-Whyte was working with another colleague, Rojo Mettle-Nunoo, for the National Democratic Congress, at the Electoral Commission national collation centre on December 9, 2020.

According to the second witness, he and his colleague were instructed by the EC Chairperson to go and confer with their party leader, John Dramani Mahama, although he did not hear the information directly from her.

He told the court that while they were aware that they were not there to take orders from Jean Mensa, this particular one was considered a serious one and so they went with it.

The NDC team had made a complaint to the EC Chairperson after which they received the instruction that she had asked them to go and consult on the specific irregularities they had brought to her attention regarding the results they had received from some regions.

“And she did also indicate that the reason she was asking us to do so is for all the stakeholders including the NPP, Peace Council and others could be invited to ensure that we had a credible result before the announcement of the winner is made,” he said.

However, he indicated their inability to even register their disagreement on Form 13 they were given since there was no space on it for such a thing.

Form 13 is used to register regional results obtained by all candidates contesting the presidential election.

Asked by one of the justices sitting on the case if this action they took did not amount to a dereliction of their duty, Dr. Kpessa-Whyte said that they were of the belief that they could trust the EC Chairperson and her actions.

The former Executive Director of the National Service Scheme, Dr. Michael Kpessa-Whyte had alleged that his party had detected some extra 390,000 ballots in the Ashanti Region overnight.