Akufo-Addo brought Jean Mensa to rig polls, don’t concede - Harruna Attah to Mahama

A former High Commissioner of Ghana to Namibia and Botswana, Ambassador Alhaji Abdul-Rahman Harruna Attah, has accused President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo of masterminding the removal of former Chair of the Electoral Commission (EC) Charlotte Osei to bring her favorite, Jean Mensa to manipulate the December 7 elections in his favour.

In an article on the just-ended December 7 elections, Ambassador Haruna Attah noted that emerging facts from the conduct of the polls clearly expose the rigging that was carried out during the polls by the elections management to help the incumbent president remain in office.

“From that day in 2018 when Mr. Akufo-Addo forced Madam Charlotte Osei, then EC Chair, out of office, and brought in Jean Mensa, the objective was clear: to manipulate the electoral process, fair or foul, but mostly foul, to entrench the little old man from Kyebi in office…That they would be so brazen as to make the process degenerate into bloodshed was something I did not expect would come to pass. But it has.

“With all the manipulation of the system by the EC to favour Akufo-Addo, Mahama did come out tops. He campaigned better, he had clear messages and did not have the kind of money to splash in campaign spend as did Nana Addo and the NPP, but by the close of the polls, Mahama’s acceptance by the people was never in doubt. As the NPP tumbled from one constituency to the other, eventually losing its majority from 2016, the NDC gained the upper hand and harvested enough constituencies to give it a claim on majority, conferring on it the right to lead the next parliament and nation,” he said.

He further noted that the performance of the NDC at the parliamentary level alone should tell Nana Addo and the NPP that it’s been a referendum against them.

Barring any litigation which could alter the parliamentary results of the just-ended elections, Ghana is going to have, for the first time, what could be described a hung parliament.

At the moment, the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) each control 237 seats in parliament. There is one independent Member of Parliament.

Prior to the polls, the NPP had 169 seats in the legislature as against the NDC’s 106.

Ambassador Harruna Attah said the NPP lost all these seats because they have lost the trust of the people, “hence the vote of no confidence that has been entered by the people through their parliamentary showing…For an incumbent, that boasted of such a huge majority before the elections, to now be scrounging and thieving around for figures to bolster its parliamentary numbers, is not only pathetic but embarrassing. They may try to put a brave face to it but the honest ones (if indeed there are any) among them would own up to the fact that “3nkor yie”!

“The nation has rejected them. By helping perpetuate the grand larceny, the EC is telling us that Ghanaians are so irresponsibly gullible that they voted for four more years of PDS, AMERI, Kelvin GVG, Bost contaminated oil sale, Agyapa, Agyapade3, financial institution closures, family and friends, useless nation-dividing cathedral, and all the other negatives that led their own Martin Amidu to describe Nana Akufo-Addo as the ‘Mother Serpent’ of corruption. Martin resigned and told Ghanaians about the tyrant parading as head of state of Ghana … Nana Addo’s dubious claim to the Ghanaian presidency, a la Jean Mensa, drips with the blood of innocent Ghanaians. There’s evidence showing battle ready troops shooting live rounds of ammo into civilians assembling for redress.

“Though the thievery denies him any legitimacy, every shed drop of the blood of Ghanaians makes him culpable. That to me, should take centre stage in the 2020 election narrative. We cannot and should not reward someone with the high office of president when there are questions of shedding of Ghanaian blood following him. He inspired the violence that led to the bloodshed of Election 2020. At the time of writing (Tuesday evening) I was yet to see evidence that Nana Addo had either expressed sorrow, remorse, or condolence. He has also not instituted any public hearing into the deaths.

“Where are the pillars of society? Where is the National Peace Council? Where are the CSOs? Where is the media? Where are the men and women of God? The Christian Council…Where are the traditional rulers? I can’t believe that we are sweeping this under the carpet! If you ask me, President Mahama, apart from insisting on the right thing being done by the EC, is on equally sound footing with these murders unresolved. He must neither concede nor congratulate anybody with Ghanaian blood asking for justice…With that, he has the backing of almost seven million of us who genuinely voted for him and more who did not vote at all.

“If Nana Addo and his apologists think these are numbers to scoff at, then their disdain for Ghana is even more insidious than I ever imagined. With all the inordinately vulgar amounts they spent in branding the country with Nana Addo’s leering image and NPP logo (on hoardings, billboards, posters, radio/tv/print) and the claim of doing so well in running the nation these past 4 years and it was only a measly 51% they could manage, it should tell them that, these elections were not won by Akufo-Addo and the NPP, they were snatched…

This was demonstrated during an Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting held on Wednesday, 2nd December, 2020. The meeting was attended by representatives of the Political Parties including Mr. Peter Boamah Otokunor (Deputy General Secretary) and Mr. Daniel Amartey (Deputy Director, Elections) of the NDC, Civil Society Organisations and Development Partners. The demonstration of the BVD was prompted by a similar allegation by the NDC that the deactivation of BVDs would result in the loss of data.

“It is therefore unfortunate that the NDC would continue to make such misleading allegations. We reassure the General Public that all data generated before, during and after the Election has been preserved and will be made available to any interested party in a transparent manner when requested through the laid down process.”

He stressed that “John Mahama must not cede the moral high ground he is occupying. He must not bow to fraud. He should treat with contempt the hypocrisy and cowardice of those spineless people stampeding him into the quagmire of their littleness… The over 6 million of us who voted for him stand by him – and in fact, Nana Addo did not have much more than that, even with all the cheating. Above all, EVERY GHANAIAN LIFE MATTERS! Who cries for the slain?”