You can't claim the presidency just because you won some regions - Oppong Nkrumah to NDC

Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah has stated that the NDC cannot claim to have won the presidential race in the recently ended elections just because they won votes in more regions if you do a regional breakdown of the polls.

According to the Minister who was answering questions at a meet the press event this week, there are legal processes laid down by law for challenging election results.

He said the NDC and its leaders should take advantage of the law and what has clearly been stated in the constitution to have their grievances resolved instead of calling for a redeclaration of the presidential elections.

“If anybody tells you that he has won some regions and therefore must win the presidency, the constitution doesn’t support that claim. It is 50% plus 1 in the valid votes in the presidential elections. In the same way if you have a challenge with an election that has taken place, collated and declared, there are clear processes for challenging same…”, he said.

Kojo sighted a similar incident the New Patriotic Party has in Savelugu, and said they asked their party agents to sign the pink sheets and after the results have been gazetted, they would add their evidence and head to court, and advised the NDC to do same.

“We have had issues with Savelugu and it was holding up part of the declaration. We instructed our party in the North to go ahead and acquiesce to the declaration of the results so that we can challenge it through legal means…” Mr Oppong Nkrumah added.

Former President John Dramani Mahama and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) have said that they will not accept the results of the 2020 general election.

According to them, the results declared by the Commission are fictionalized and that they cannot accept it.

The NDC’s claims seem to have had grounding after the Electoral Commission admitted to having committed some errors in the total valid votes counted on the day.

The EC which on Wednesday December 9, declared Nana Akufo-Addo winner of the 2020 polls, however, maintains those arithmetic errors do not change the outcome of the results.