Your Lordships,
On 7 & 8 December 2012, over 11 million Ghanaians including myself went to
the polls to vote for a president to lead Ghana for the next 4 years. Some
hours before the Chairman of the Electoral Commission, Dr. Afari Gyan,
declared the winner, the New Patriotic Party drew his attention to some
irregularities in the collation of the results from around the country and
alleged that a "systematic electoral fraud" had taken place. They pleaded
with Dr. Afari Gyan to delay announcing the results as they gathered
evidence to prove their allegation. Dr. Afari Gyan ignored their plea even
though by law he had more than 36 hours to announce whom the winner was,
and he declared John Dramani Mahama as President-Elect of Ghana.
John Mahama may or may not be a good president but it is critical that the
alleged electoral fraud is investigated to ensure that our democracy is
secured or at least appears to be secured. The Progressive Peoples’ Party
and the Convention Peoples’ Party have all made similar allegations of
electoral fraud in the just ended elections.
Their allegation is that more votes were added to what John Mahama actually
got at the polling stations. In other words, John Mahama’s results were
inflated. In some cases, results from polling stations, which did not exist
were included in the collation resulting in more votes for John Mahama.
Furthermore, votes were deducted from other candidates making it possible
for John Mahama to obtain the requisite 50%+1.
The New Patriotic Party has threatened to petition your Lordships to do the
right thing, which is that the president must be declared based on the
actual votes from the people of Ghana.
I’m Ghanaian and I want my vote to matter.
I’m Ghanaian and my vote must matter.
I’m Ghanaian, COUNT MY VOTE.
Respectfully submitted.
Edem Suleman.
