By Nana Akua Tweneboah-Koduah
With the unsigned pink sheet allegation by the NPP falling apart, the NPP has cunningly repackaged the duplicated serial number allegation to trump all their bogus allegations concerning the results of the 2012 Presidential Election petition before the Supreme Court.
They are now requesting the Supreme Court to cancel almost 3 million votes in polling stations that have same serial numbers on their pink sheets. But lawyers for President John Mahama and the NDC argued in court during the oral addresses on Wednesday August 7 that the claim by the petitioners on duplicated serial numbers was baseless since there was no irregularity involved in the same serial number appearing on more than one pink sheet.
Mr Tsatsu Tsikata who represented the NDC stated emphatically that, “The attempt to nullify votes on this ground is absurd and to do so would also unconstitutionally deprive millions of citizens of their right to vote.”
“Serial numbers are not, and have never been, security features on pink sheets, unlike ballot papers. Petitioners have provided no legal basis for this category of their claim”, he added.
Mr Tony Lithur, counsel for President Mahama, added the icing to the compelling argument by the respondents when he bolding challenged the petitioners by asking, “On the face of the pink sheets are those polling stations differently identified by codes and names?”
Mr Lithur went on with these further questions, “Did supervised elections take place at the polling stations? Were your polling agents present at those separate polling stations? Did they sign the results without protest? If the answer to those questions is “yes”, then where lies the irregularity, particularly when you haven’t filed a single affidavit from any person as to what may have caused any such irregularity?”
Indeed it is absurd for the NPP to clamour for the votes from polling stations with the same serial numbers to be thrown away when they did not back that claim with anything else apart from the fact that those polling stations have just the same serial numbers.
What is strange is that the Electoral Commission (EC) and all the political parties do not recognize polling stations by serial numbers. All political parties both in the past and present have always recognized polling stations by their unique codes and names. Serial numbers have never been part of the equation.
But because the NPP folks do not have anything to hinge on as far as their “Kweku Ananse Story” (Bogus Claim) is concerned, they are mischievously pretending that they do not know how unique polling stations are recognized or determined hence their insistence that serial numbers have to be used to determine unique polling stations.
What simply baffles the respondents is that the NPP folks no longer want to have anything to do with codes and names assigned by the EC to the 26,002 polling stations.
Even more perplexing is the fact that if the EC did something wrong by way of duplicating serial numbers on the pink sheets, we had 26,002 polling agents from the NPP at all the polling stations, but not one of them raised hell on the issue.
In fact, they all signed the pink sheets attesting to the fact that the 2012 Presidential Election was free and fair and that votes assigned to Nana Akufo-Addo and the other presidential candidates including President Mahama were accurate and truthful to the letter.
With this development, is it not pathetic for Dr Mahamadu Bawumia who is fighting for his political grandstanding in the NPP, to seize the pink sheets after the declaration of the results and go on a fishing expedition to determine why some pink sheets have some duplicate serial numbers when this man never once went for IPAC meetings and has no clue about the rules and regulations of the EC.
It is therefore, not out of place that Bawumia has become a laughing stock in town with his “You And I Were Not There” mantra which may end up in the Ghana political history for a long time to come.
nakuakoduah@yahoo.com
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