Alan Kyeremanten Must Freeze His 2016 Presidential Ambition - Kofi Jumah

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Category: Politics

Created on Thursday, 18 April 2013 00:00

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Alan Kyeremanten Must Freeze His 2016 Presidential Ambition - Kofi Jumah

The former Asokwa MP, Maxwell Kofi Jumah says fellow party stalwart Alan Kyeremanten should put a freeze on his presidential ambition until “a movement” to advance the course of the main opposition New Patriotic Party’s 2012 presidential candidate “is taken care of”.

Kofi Jumah, who supported Alan Kyeremanten in the party’s presidential primaries ahead of the 2012 elections, told XYZ News in an interview on Wednesday April 17, that he will discourage the former Trade Minister from advancing his Presidential ambitions.

“I’ll tell him [to] hold on until this movement [of Nana Akufo Addo’s] is taken care of”.

He said: “We are talking about a movement that was started as a result of an election being stolen” adding that: “The need to restore confidence in our democratic system is for Nana Akufo Addo to continue to pursue the movement that has just been started as a result of what some people will consider an accident of misjudgement by the Electoral Commission”.

Nana Akufo Addo, alongside his running mate Dr Mahmoud Bawumia and Party Chairman Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey is in court challenging the validity of the 2012 election results by which President John Mahama was declared winner by the Electoral Commission (EC).

The three Petitioners argue that the incumbent party colluded with the EC to strategically manipulate the results in favour of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

They therefore, are praying the Court to set aside and nullify the EC’s results which declared President Mahama as winner of the presidential poll.

They want the court to annul 4,670,504 of the valid votes cast during the election at 11,916 polling stations where they claim a lot of anomalies occurred.

The Court whittled the case down to two issues.

They included whether or not there were statutory violations, irregularities, omissions and malpractices in the 2012 general elections and if same impacted the final results.

The Supreme Court started hearing the substantive case on Wednesday April 17, 2013.

It is not clear how long the Court will take in pronouncing a judgment but Maxwell Kofi Jumah says Nana Akufo Addo must be kept at the forefront of leading the Party into another election.

Mr Kyeremanten was one of the numerous candidates who vied for the Director General position of the World Trade Organisation but he failed.

It is speculated that he would activate his presidential ambitions for 2016 after his failure to win the WTO job.

Source: XYZ

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Superstitious Meanings Read Into Herd Of Elephants’ Destruction Of President’s Billboard

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Category: Politics

Created on Saturday, 13 April 2013 00:00

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Superstitious Meanings Read Into Herd Of Elephants’ Destruction Of President’s Billboard

A parade of Elephants from a forest reserve on the Ghana-Burkina Faso border has pulled down a 2012 campaign bill board of President John Mahama in the Ghanaian village of Bagli in the Laura Nandom area on Friday April 12, 2013.

The vandalism by the Elephants has left Residents and Spiritualists reading superstitious meanings into the incident because the opposition New Patriotic Party’s logo is an elephant.

While some believe it is a harbinger of how the election petition case will pan out at the Supreme Court, others have simply brushed it aside as a mere accident on the part of the marauding elephants.

Mahama Awudu, who witnessed the damage caused by the herd told XYZ News: “All of a sudden they pulled down John Mahama’s billboard and run back into the bush and went back into the bush and went back into Burkina Faso”.

He said: “The Mallams and traditionalist have given their own interpretations” into the incident.

Awudu noted that politicians in the area have also put a political twist on the incident.

The eyewitness said: “People are saying that…it means victory for the elephant family”, as far as the opposition Flagbearer for the 2012 elections, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo’s challenge of the 2012 election results is concerned.

“Other people are saying John Mahama’s family will handover, [and be] subdued”, he added.

Source: radioxyzonline

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Election Petition Case: Bawumia Testifies

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Category: Elections & Governance

Created on Wednesday, 17 April 2013 00:00

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Election Petition Case: Bawumia Testifies

Second day of the Election petition case which is underway at the Supreme Court started with New Patriotic Party (NPP) running mate Dr. Mahmoud Bawumia mounting the witness box to give his evidence.

Dr. Bawumia who is the second petitioner told the court that he was in the witness box because the declaration made by the second respondent, Electoral Commission in the 2012 elections cannot be supported by the primary evidence he has gathered as the chairman of the committee tasked to investigate alleged irregularities in the 2012 elections.

The petitioners, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Dr. Bawumia and the party Chairman, Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey are challenging President John Mahama’s legitimacy and praying the court to annul 4,670,504 votes and subsequently declare the presidential candidate of the NPP, as the one who won the December 2012 elections.

The hearing was billed to have started on Tuesday but the Petitioners’ Lawyers insisted they could only proceed after the Electoral Commission (EC)-second Respondents-had filed its affidavits. The successful filing of affidavits by the Electoral Commission on Tuesday April 17, 2013 paved the way for the Supreme Court to hopefully, barring any technical delays, to begin hearing the substantive election case.

According to Dr. Bawumia, as the head petitioners committee he received thousands of irregularities on statement of polls and declaration of results known as pink sheets.

“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.”

It is the record on which basis the second respondent declared results for Mahama.

Lead Counsel for the petitioners, Philip Addison who presented a copy of the pink sheet to the witness asked Dr. Bawumia whether he found anything wrong with the pink sheets.

Dr. Bawumia answered that he examined around 24,000 pinks sheets and found so many irregularities and names over voting, voting without verification and other irregularities.

The second petitioner went ahead to give examples of the over-votes and noted that votes in Upper West Akyem, Arabic Primary School polling stations as well as those in Tano North were annulled by the second respondent as a result of the over votes.

Philip Addison asks if the findings on over voting will have an effect on the results declared.

Bawumia answers that findings suggest that if the results of over-voting were annulled, none of the two leading candidates would have attained the mandatory 50+1 per cent of the total votes cast. He therefore seeks the order of the court to annul the results in polling stations that had over votes.

Philip Addison goes ahead to ask the witness what he means by voting without verification.

Bawumia answers that the second respondent prior to 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 goes ahead to say that the law stated emphatically that no prospective voter must vote without being verified.

He says after examination over 535,723 people voted without verification.

Addison: Will the total results be affected if there is an annulment of the total votes in areas where there was voting without verification?

Bawumia answers yes. The results will be greatly affected if the results of voting without verification were to be annuled. He goes ahead to ask the court to annul all the results of the specific polling stations where there was voting without verification.

One of the presiding judges asked if the witness was asking the court to go ahead to annul the figures in all those polling stations merely because some people may have voted without verification.

Bawumia says yes. That was the law made by the Second respondent. He cites examples where the EC cancelled all the results in polling stations because some people engaged in voting without verification.

“The EC cannot apply one set of rules to one polling station and a different set of rules to another polling station,” he says. He demands fairness and equity at all polling stations.

The nine-member Bench of Justices at the Supreme Court will sit every day, including weekends once the substantive case starts until it is brought to an end.

The case has been adjourned to tomorrow, April 18, 2013.

Source: Daily Guide/Ghana

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Akufo-Addo not desperate for power – Osafo-Maafo

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Category: Politics

Created on Friday, 12 April 2013 00:00

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Akufo-Addo not desperate for power – Osafo-Maafo

Former Finance and Economic Planning Minister Yaw Osafo-Maafo yesterday parried claims that suggest the presidential candidate for the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the 2012 general elections, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, was desperate for political power.

According to him, he has had several discussions with the man and he (Nana Addo) has never given him cause to believe that he wanted to be President by hook or crook.

{sidebar id=10 align=right}“I can assure you that I talk quite often to Nana Addo; Nana Addo has not got a desperate desire for power,” he said during the launch of the ‘Justice and Peace Foundation’ in Accra.

Instead, he said, “he’s got a desperate desire to establish the truth to save elections in this country and to have ripples which would make rigging of elections in this country absolutely impossible” insisting “we want future elections to be reliable.”

That, according to him was “the reason Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s pending court challenge against the EC must be celebrated rather than condemned as a desperate desire for power,” he said to a rapturous applaud of the cheering crowd.

For him, “this challenge and the landmark Supreme Court ruling that would emerge will set the right precedent for the conduct of future elections vis-à-vis the EC’s impartial role” insisting that “election results declared by the Electoral Commission must always reflect the sovereign will of the Ghanaian electorate.”

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He therefore stressed the need for all Ghanaians to fight to ensure that this constitutional provision was upheld since, according to him, “action speaks louder than words.”

This, he said was because “if you peddle an image of peace and condone acts that exclude actual peace through the absence of fairness and justice, you lose the moral right to the accolade of a peaceful party.”

“This is not a shouting contest where the party that shouts ‘peace peace’ the loudest is the true adherent of peace,” he emphasized.

Whereas there could be justice without peace, he noted “there can never be lasting peace without justice.”

Granted the individual investment of time, resources and energy and opportunity cost in the prosecution of an outcome of elections, the former Finance Minister said “an election becomes a very personal and emotive event that cannot be wished away by people who use peace as a propaganda tool” asking rhetorically “what about the issues of moral rights, ethics, rule of law, justice and winning fairly, for the genuinely aggrieved other person or party?”

“For how long must the cheated be asked to turn the other cheek in the name of so-called peace? What is the guarantee that the cheat would be magnanimous next time around and play fair? How is future fairness to be assumed when it is true that current power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely?” he wondered.

Mr Osafo-Maafo noted that “as we celebrate mutedly or grieve loudly the outcome of the 2012 elections conducted by Dr Afari Gyan’s Electoral Commission, let us not make selective judgments that peace is more important than justice” since in his own words “there can never be credible peace without demonstrable justice.”

The event was chaired by former Chairman of Council of State under the erstwhile Kufuor-led NPP administrator, Professor Adzei Bekoe.

Present were other dignitaries including former officials of government such as Glady’s Asmah, Minister of Fisheries; Stanley Adjiri-Blankson, AMA Chief Executive; Harona Esseku, former NPP chairman and a host of others.

Source: Daily Guide/Ghana

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