You can’t change the rules when it suits you - Mahama slams EC over re-collation of 5 seats won by NDC

President-Elect John Dramani Mahama has criticised the Electoral Commission of Ghana (EC) over its decision to re-collate the parliamentary results of five constituencies where their parliamentary candidates had earlier been declared winners.

Speaking to a gathering at his office at Cantonment in Accra, Mahama accused the EC of not being consistent with its position on election results that have already been declared.

He indicated that in the past, when the EC was asked to re-collate election results that had already been declared, it said that it could not and that only the court could handle such matters.

“There are a few outstanding issues arising from the election. As you are aware, nine constituencies are in dispute and we think that the Electoral Commission should act in a principled manner. You cannot change the rules when it suits you and apply different rules when different circumstances exist. There was a particular case in 2020, and the Electoral Commission came out clearly that if a declaration had been made, it was not the duty of the Electoral Commission to adjudicate it. The courts were the right place to go.

“And so if a declaration has been made, it doesn’t matter under what circumstances. They are saying that some were under duress. In the case of Techiman South, it was under duress. There were soldiers in the collation room, there was chaos in the collation room when the declaration was made and the same arguments were passed that, you know, there should be a re-collation. The Electoral Commission said, no, there can’t be any re-collation once a declaration has been made. In the same circumstances, declarations have been made. If people have a grievance, they must go to the courts and redress those grievances there. We don’t think that the goalpost should be shifted depending on who is at the other end of the stick,” he said.

He added, “There’s one particular case in which there was no declaration. We can understand that. And so the Electoral Commission has to make a determination on what happens. Is there going to be a rerun? How are they going to be able to collate those results? And so we think that there must be fairness and justice in everything that we do.”

BAI/OGB

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