It was not a mistake; it was deliberate – Adu Asare on change of name

NDC’s Kojo Adu Asare says he will no longer go to court over his renaming on ballot paper as ‘Justice Yeboah’ during his party’s National Executives election last Saturday.

Mr Kojo Adu Asare, who contested the position of Deputy General Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), was misrepresented on the ballot paper and was believed to have threatened a lawsuit against the party. He accuses some individuals of masterminding the plot to ensure that he lost the election.

He said he will now use internal party mechanisms and allow the newly elected leadership of the NDC, to take the matter up, and deal with the perpetrators of what he described as a "heinous crime" against him.

He explained that, all candidates were asked to submit passport pictures with red background, “but at the end of the day, they ended up cropping off the red background, and unfortunately changed the background to white and put out a distorted image."

Peter Otukonor, and lawyer, Barbara Serwaa Asamoah, were elected as the NDC’s National Deputy General Secretaries at the party’s 9th National Delegates’ Congress over the weekend.

Barbara Asamoah polled 3, 041 votes while Otukonor had 1, 816 votes.

Speaking on PEACE FM’s flagship morning show ‘Kokrokoo’, Mr Adu Asare said the party must investigate the issue thoroughly since what transpired cannot be a mistake as purported.

"It is not a mistake, it is somebody’s deliberate attempt to fix me, it was not a mistake. If it was a mistake on the ballot paper, could it have been a mistake on the declaration paper too, it is unto the person," he said.

"To be honest with you, I can't only believe that it was a coincidence. The only Justice Yeboah that comes to mind is somebody who contested as Deputy Youth organizer at the youth conference and was not in any of this particular category of elections," Mr Adu Asare told host Kwami Sefa Kayi.

Asked whether he will still go to court? - Mr Adu Asare said “I don’t really want to pursue this, throughout the elections I was not very well, I had a problem with my leg and cut short my campaign. As of Saturday, my legs were swollen, I need to take care of myself for now, I have been in and out of hospital and have been speaking to some party elders.”

“What I want is about the system and not me. What I want is for the system to take care of some of these bad blood things. For the fear of God, I will let this one go… because I have confidence in Ofosu Ampofo who would not allow such issues to die off."

He said the party would have to look for those who perpetrated the “heinous crime and deal with them.”

“The party has to do things properly, those who did quality control did not do a good job and if they could make such a mistake and cost the office of the deputy general secretary, those who won know their election is denigrated, somebody is in an office who is not legitimately there,” he added.

How He Found Out About The Anomaly

On the Election Day, Mr Adu Asare said it was the Member of Parliament for Ajumako-Enyan-Essiam, Cassiel Ato Forson, who first alerted him about the anomaly on the ballot paper after the Central Region had started voting.

“It did not take more than 10 minutes after voting that he alerted me,” he said

“I rushed there and confirmed for myself and I went to the dais to complain to Alex Segbefia. I wanted the process to be halted after an hour and wanted an announcement to be made that the name was wrong so that at least people will be aware, even though it would not have cured the problem, voters would have been aware.”

He said after several complaints to Kofi Attoh, Bede Ziedeng and Alex Segbefia who were part of the committee for the congress, they said they cannot stop the process and that they did not have the power as a committee to stop the process of voting.

“I insisted they halt the process, I nearly went to pick the microphone to halt the process” and even though Kofi Attoh, in particular, acknowledged the fact that it was wrong, he insisted he and his team cannot stop the process.

He said the lights at the voting area was so bad such that, he knew the voters could not even see the picture properly especially as it had also been distorted in the attempt to crop off the red background.