Flagbearer of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) John Dramani Mahama is playing discordant tunes and predicting chaos during the December 7, 2020 general election.
The former President Mahama has virtually been on the necks of the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC), Mrs Jean Mensa and members of the election management body, accusing them of scheming to conduct “flawed” and “rigged” polls.
According to him, everything that the EC is doing in preparation for the elections is showing Ghana is heading for a flawed election.
“When we say it they think we are just causing trouble but this can lead this nation into chaos. I have said it that on December 7 if this election is flawed we will not accept. We will not accept it!”
“Who accepts flawed elections? Nobody”.
Former President Mahama said even though the NDC has spoken and pointed out the flaws in the way the Commission is preparing the country for the elections, everybody has remained quiet adding, “But when there is trouble they say it is this person’s fault and yet we have been given enough warning signals the EC is creating problems.”
2016 defeat
As incumbent President, Mr John Mahama lost the last general election in 2016 in a spectacular fashion with almost one million votes to current President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
Fearing the outcome of the 2020 polls may be worst for him, the former President has not lost any opportunity to blame the EC for his widely predicted defeat.
Discordant tunes
Speaking at a mini-rally at Abura in the Cape Coast North Constituency during his campaign tour of the Central Region, the former President stated that the NDC is not a trouble maker but simply demanding fairness at the elections.
The NDC, he said, wants a peaceful and fair election so that at the end of the process there would be acceptance on the part of all candidates but warned the opposition will not accept a flawed election.
According to him, the new voters’ roll compiled by the EC, both the software and the hardware, are supposed to eliminate manual verification.
The excuse the EC gave for the compilation, he said, was that the old register could not capture some people’s fingerprints and because of that failure, manual verification had to be used.
“The EC said they are therefore going to add facial verification; so if the fingerprint fails, facial verification would be used and if that also fails then they would use manual verification.
“They brought in new BVRs that have not been tested for the process. On election day, these BVRs would be brought for use and if fingerprint verification fails, they would do facial verification, and if that also fails manual verification would be done.
“Since the efficacy of this equipment has not been tested beforehand, we will end up with more manual verification than we have ever had in the history of Ghana’s elections,” he claimed.
Voter exhibition
Citing the just ended voter exhibition exercise as an example, the NDC flagbearer wondered how people’s names could just get missing from the voter roll.
He argued that in previous exercises the problems that were encountered generally had to do with names being misspelled or names being put under different polling stations rather than where these people registered.
“This one, people’s names got missing from their polling stations; 21,000 could not find their names and then suddenly the Commission says it has found the missing names but is left with only 7,000. Where the names go?
“Where did the names go that you went and found them and you said only 7,000? Even if one name is missing from the register it could disenfranchise a Ghanaian.”
“When we talk about these things they think we are just creating trouble but we demand the right thing to be done.”
Mr. Mahama stated that candidates for the election were forced to file their nominations without the certified register, which could spark trouble.
According to him, each candidate was required to get registered voters to sign their nomination forms but stressed without the certified register everything they did was done blindly.
“So if it turns out that they check and discover some of these people’s names have not been captured on the voters’ register, is their nomination valid or invalid through no fault of theirs.
“And yet when you say this, people think you are making too much noise,” he stated.
Meanwhile, the Jean Mensa-led EC has given assurance that the 2020 general election will be the fairest and cleanest in the country’s history.
