EC in an affidavit scandal in Gambaga

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Category: Elections & Governance

Created on Saturday, 27 April 2013 00:00

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EC in an affidavit scandal in Gambaga

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{sidebar id=10 align=right}A case has been reported to the Gambaga Police in the Northern Region in which a presiding officer in the 2012 elections has been asked to sign an affidavit saying he annulled the results from his polling station without authorisation from the regional and national office of the Electoral Commission.

The District Electoral Commission Officer for Nalerugu Gambaga, Bimark Nteh is said to have directed Evans Iddrisu, to sign the affidavit, part of which was to certify that he [Evans] was indeed the presiding officer at the Nanyeri polling station and to confirm the circumstances under which the results at the polling station was annulled.

The incident comes on the back of the presidential election petition in which leaders of the New Patriotic Party are challenging the results declared by the Electoral Commission.

Petitioners alleged there were so many irregularities in the 2012 elections and cited over-voting as one of the many irregularities.

The three petitioners are asking the Supreme Court to annul all cases of over votes and other forms of irregularities in the 2012 general elections.

They cited the Nanyeri polling Station in which results were annulled because there were over-votes and prayed the court to replicate the action taken at Nanyeri polling station in all other polling stations where there were over votes.

By over-votes, the number of votes cast at a polling station must either be more than the total number of registered voters at the polling station or be more than the ballot papers issued to voters on the day of voting.

The Presiding Officer at the Nanyeri Polling Station Evans Iddrisu told Myjoyonline.com, he, together with the party agents and the returning officer at the collation centre in Nalerigu Gambaga, annulled the results of the election at the Nanyeri polling station because there was over-vote by one vote.

He said they complied with the instructions given during training that when there is a case of over-voting the entire results must be cancelled.

He also confirmed being contacted on Tuesday by the District Director of EC to come and sign an affidavits over the same issue four months after the election had been held.

He said he did not sign the affidavits but reported the case to the Gambaga police.

The Electoral Officer, Bismark Nteh told Myjoyonline.com the issue is under investigation and would not comment on it.

He would rather the national officers commented on the issue.

It is not clear why the District EC office is now requesting the presiding officer to sign an affidavit confirming that he annulled the election results in the polling station because there was over vote and that he was not authorized to do so.

But the Editor in-chief of the Crusading Guide Newspaper Kweku Baako Jnr has questioned the timing of the affidavits being sought by the Electoral Commission.

On Saturday's Newsfile programme on Joy FM, Baako in a rather sarcastic manner, questioned whether the affidavits were meant to be used at the Accra Sports Stadium or at the Supreme Court.

He said at a time when the Supreme Court had taken all affidavits from the feuding parties in the election petition and has actually begun hearing it was curious to know why the EC is now chasing for affidavits to be signed.

From: Nathan GadugahMy/joyonline.com

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Bawumia gives 4m reasons to show - EC Was Wrong to Declare Mahama President

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Category: Elections & Governance

Created on Thursday, 18 April 2013 00:00

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Bawumia gives 4m reasons to show - EC Was Wrong to Declare Mahama President

The much-anticipated hearing of the substantive case of the election petition challenging the declaration of John Dramani Mahama as winner of the 2012 general election took off in full flight yesterday at the Supreme Court of Ghana, with Mahamamudu Bawumia, the 2012 Vice Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party, mounting the witness box to lead evidence for the petitioners.

Dr Bawumia, in his evidence pointed out irregularities, statutory and constitutional violations and malpractices in the presidential election which he said gave rise to illegal votes of 3,924,844 votes collated and counted by the EC to declare Mr Mahama the winner.

{sidebar id=10 align=right}He, therefore, prayed the court to annul the illegal votes, explaining that doing so would leave the first respondent, Mr Mahama, with 41.96 per cent of the valid votes, while the first petitioner, Nana Akufo-Addo, would get 56.65 per cent.

Dr Bawumia’s impressive presentation won the admiration of many people, including even Nana Ato Dadzie, a member of the legal team of the National Democratic Congress, who particularly acknowledged his statistical prowess during a post-hearing interview with the media. Lead counsel for the Electoral Commission, Quarshie-Idun, also described the renowned economist as “our eminent statistician.”

{sidebar id=1 align right}Dr Bawumia, the second petitioner in the case, who was led in evidence by Philip Addison, Lead Counsel for the petitioners, said of the EC’s attitude as far as the December election was concerned: “My Lords, it looks like every irregularity, violation and malpractices is supposed to be an error except the declaration of the results.”

He told the nine-member Supreme Court, presided over by Justice William Atuguba, that the declaration of first respondent, Mr Mahama, as winner of the election by the Electoral Commission, the second respondent, could not be supported by the primary evidence he and the other petitioners had gathered.

“We found numerous malpractices and statutory violations and irregularities as evidenced in the primary record of the elections at the polling station called pink sheets,” he told the court, adding that all these came out after the NPP Presidential Candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo, had formed a committee to investigate alleged irregularities in the December 2012 elections.

Dr Bawumia explained that the committee examined around 24,000 pinks sheets and found so many irregularities, such as cases of over voting, voting without verification, duplication of polling station serial numbers, and pink sheets without signatures of presiding officers.

Over-voting

Dr Bawumia explained to the court what he meant by over-voting: “Over-voting is in two forms. Over voting will arise if the total votes in the box exceeds the voters’ register at a particular polling station. Also, if the number of votes in the ballot box is far in excess of the number of voters you have given ballot papers to. This type of over-voting is what the EC Chairman was very clear on before the elections,” he said.

He said the EC Chairman had stated before the 2012 general elections that even if one vote was detected to have been in excess of the number of ballot papers issued, the results of the polling station would be annulled.

Dr Bawumia cited examples of polling stations whose results were annulled because of over-voting. The polling stations were Arabic Primary School polling stations in the Upper West Akyem constituency, as well as another polling station in the Tano North constituency. Voting Without Biometric Verification

Dr Bawumia drew the court’s attention to the fact that the second respondent, the EC, before the 2012 elections, promulgated a law which said all prospective voters had to be verified by the help of a biometric machine before voting.

He told the court that after thorough examination, it was unearthed that some 535,723 people voted without going through biometric verification, and prayed the court to annul the number of votes affected by voting without biometric verification.

At this stage, Justice Baffoe Bonnie, a member of the panel of judges, asked if Dr Bawumia was asking the court to go ahead to annul the figures in all the affected polling stations merely because some people had voted without verification.

He answered in the affirmative, citing examples of polling stations where the EC cancelled the entire results of the elections on grounds that some people had voted without going through biometric verification.

"The EC cannot apply one set of rules to one polling station and a different set of rules to another polling station," he maintained, demanding fairness and equity at all polling stations.

Pink Sheets Without Signatures of Presiding Officers

Dr Bawumia told the court that pink sheets containing records of voting at some 1039 polling stations did not have the signatures of the presiding officers. The number of votes affected here, as he indicated to the court, amounted to some 705, 305.

He explained that the absence of signatures of the presiding officers on the pink sheets was at variance with the laws set out by the second respondent, the EC, before the 2012 general election. Dr Bawumia told the court that the pink sheets must have an exclusive serial number for each polling station, and even though there must not be a situation where different polling stations share the same serial number, that was not the case in the 2012 elections.

‘Ghost’ Polling Stations

Dr Bawumia told the court that there was evidence to show that voting took place at some 23 polling stations that were not among the 26002 polling stations on the list of the EC.

But Tony Lithur, counsel for Mr Mahama, objected to the mention of 23 polling stations, drawing attention to the fact that the witness in his affidavits had mentioned only 22 polling stations and could therefore not be allowed to lead evidence in respect of 23 polling stations. He therefore asked the witness to stick to 22. Lawyer for the EC agreed to the objection.

Counsel for the NDC, Tsatsu Tsikata, asked the petitioners to present ‘better and further particulars’ for the 23 polling stations if that was the case.

A member of the panel of judges, Justice Gbadegbe, asked the petitioners to stick to the 22 polling stations they had early on agreed to before yesterday’s hearing.

Philip Addision, lead counsel for the petitioners, maintained his clients had provided evidence for 23 polling stations but would stick to leading evidence in respect of 22 polling stations as directed by the court.

Faked foreign voters list

Dr Bawumia told the court that the EC had still not furnished petitioners with particulars of the 241,554 voters it claimed to have registered abroad for the elections. The EC has so far provided a list covering 705 voters, a list Dr Bawumia described as “faked”.

He said when the petitioners demanded the bio-data of the foreign voters from the EC, the data they received indicated “fake voter ID numbers” and a “mathematical formula” where same names had different numbers running through.

He told the court that the number of registered voters in the voters register, as supplied by the EC, kept changing. He explained that the EC provided a total register of 14,301,680 of voters before the election.

On the day the chairman of the EC declared the results of the election, he gave a figure of 14,158,890, a difference of 127,210 from the one they had early on provided.

By Nana Yaw Dwamena & Fiifi Arhin

Source: thestatesmanonline.com

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Only 355 Pink Sheets Challenged By Lithur - Out of 11,138 filed by petitioners

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Category: Elections & Governance

Created on Thursday, 25 April 2013 00:00

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Only 355 Pink Sheets Challenged By Lithur - Out of 11,138 filed by petitioners

At the end of his five-day cross-examination in which he failed to ‘tame’ Mahamudu Bawumia, principal witness for the petitioners in the ongoing election petition hearing at the Supreme Court, Tony Lithur, lead counsel for John Dramani Mahama, managed to raise questions about only 355 of the 11,138 pink sheets which form the basis of the petitioners’ case.

His main claim in respect of about 255 of the pink sheets was that they had been duplicated by the petitioners just to shore up the numbers to make their case, a claim that was vehemently denied by Dr Bawumia.

For about 100 of the pink sheets, which did not have the signatures of the presiding officers, Mr Lithur’s challenge was on the basis that they have details such as the names of the presiding officers and the time the elections started and ended.

The principal witness for the petitioners, himself the second petitioner, had consistently told the court that 704 of the pink sheets originally filed at the court had been deleted from their list and that they did not form part of their analysis.

Mahama is beneficiary of illegalities

Dr Bawumia yesterday firmly stood his grounds in his defence of the claim by the petitioners that there were constitutional and statutory violations, malpractices and irregularities in the conduct of the elections.

Responding to questions from Mr Lithur, he said while Mr Mahama could not be accused of any illegality, he was the beneficiary of the constitutional and statutory violations, malpractices and irregularities that occurred in the election.

Dr Bawumia added that the petitioners were also not in court to accuse any voter of engaging in illegalities, stressing: “We are here because the Electoral Commission did not conduct the elections according to laid down regulations and constitutional provisions.”

Duplicate polling station serial numbers

Dr Bawumia told the court the duplication of same polling station serial numbers was one of the serious malpractices identified in the conduct of the election, and thus compromised the integrity of the election.

He explained that there was a high degree of correlation between the duplication of polling station serial numbers and the constitutional and statutory violations, irregularities and malpractices that occurred in the conduct of the elections.

According to the petitioners, 74 per cent of all cases of over-voting took place at polling stations with duplicate serial numbers; 75 per cent of cases of voting without biometric verification took place at polling stations with duplicate serial numbers; 77 per cent of pink sheets without the signatures of presiding officers occurred at polling stations with duplicate serial numbers; while 85 per cent of duplicates pink sheets have duplicate serial numbers.

Bawumia demands annulment of 2,600 votes affected by duplicate serial numbers

Dr Bawumia insisted the integrity of the elections had been compromised at the polling stations with duplicate serial numbers, and so the affected 2,600 votes should be annulled by the court.

Responding to a question from Tony Lithur that he was seeking an annulment of the those votes just because he wanted to become a Vice President, Dr Bawumia said: “We are seeking the annulment of the votes because we can’t trust the integrity of the results from those polling stations because of the violations, malpractices and irregularities.”

EC has a duty to protect integrity of polls

When Mr Mahama’s counsel suggested to Dr Bawumia that agents of the petitioners had a duty to check the malpractices that took place, the witnessed told the court it was the responsibility the second respondent, the Electoral Commission, to protect the integrity of the polls by preventing the irregularities, violations and malpractices from taking place.

By Nana Yaw Dwamena

Source: The New Statesman/Ghana

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Election Petition: Nana Addo Will Be A Better Option In The Witness Box - NDCs Dela Edem

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Category: Elections & Governance

Created on Thursday, 18 April 2013 00:00

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Election Petition: Nana Addo Will Be A Better Option In The Witness Box...

Dela Edem, a member of the Communication team of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has opined that flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) for the 2012 Presidential election, Nana Addo Danquah Akufo Addo would have been a better choice in the witness box than his running mate; Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia.

Today, Thursday marks the third day hearing of the Election Petition started. As part of proceedings, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia appeared in the witness box to present his evidence led by lawyer of the petitioners, Philip Addison on the second and third day.

Speaking on the backdrop that Dr Bawumia is an economist and a banker, Dela Edem said Nana Addo would have been a better option because he is a lawyer.

According to him, the former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana is not articulate enough, ‘and that is affecting his performance in the witness box’.

“If Nana Addo had mounted the witness box, it would have been better because he is a lawyer; Dr Bawumia is not…There are a lot of errors in the Affidavits that was presented by the petitioners and I believe that will be proven by the NDC lawyers”, he told Kwami Sefa-Kayi in a discussion on Peace FM’s morning show, Kokrokoo.

Source: Rebecca Addo-Tetteh/peacefmonline.com

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