NPP Rejects Calling 2016 Polls

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has denied allegations that the party announced the results of the 2016 elections ahead of the Electoral Commission (EC).

At an Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting on Wednesday, May 24, some opposition parties criticised the NPP in particular for allegedly declaring the results of the presidential polls rather than waiting on the EC for declaration.

The campaign manager of the NPP for 2016 elections, Peter Mac Manu, said some members of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) rather posted election results on their social media pages, with some boasting that the NDC was in a comfortable lead.

He stated that he only requested the flagbearer of the NDC to concede defeat at that time since results compiled by the NPP showed that the NDC had lost.

“I spoke to them and showed them the Facebook wall of Mrs Bawa-Mogtari, the presidential spokesperson of former President John Mahama, who on her Facebook wall at 11:09pm on 7th December said that from detailed figures they had received from their parallel vote tabulation, they were in a comfortable lead. Then at 11:49pm, James Agyenim Boateng, also on his Twitter handle, said that the NDC was in a comfortable lead with, I think, 53.8 percent and I came out at 2:30am after these two observations from the NDC. So what wrong have I committed?” he asked.

He said he showed “documents from the polling stations where the EC [itself] had posted at various polling stations and there is no law in the country that bans that.”

He insisted that he did not declare results but asked President Mahama and the NDC to concede defeat.

Meanwhile, political parties at the meeting also raised concerns about the mode of transmission of the 2016 presidential and parliamentary election results by the Electoral Commission (EC).

They accused the EC of abandoning the original mode of transmission after it complained its system had been compromised, hence the resort to manual transmission.