The leadership of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Western Region, say they are considering a court action to force a recount of parliamentary ballots in five constituencies in the region.
The party is alleging some irregularities in the counting and collation of results in the Ellembelle, Aowin, Suaman, Amenfi Cental, and Juaboso constituencies.
All the constituencies in question have largely been strongholds of the NDC except for Ellembele.
The NPP won eight (8) more seats at the end of the 2016 polls, to take their total to sixteen (16), leaving the NDC with ten (10), which includes the five in contention.
The Western Regional NPP Secretary, Charles Bissue, in an interview with Citi News, said “We are going to court. Tomorrow [Tuesday], the legal team will meet. We’ve called for all the pink sheets in Takoradi so we are going to look at them; but those 5 seats are Ellembele, Aowin, Suaman, Amenfi Central and Juaboso. On the 7th of December when the elections were going on, we had our own plans as to the collation of our results which was piloted in Amenfi West, where we got out results by 6.30 pm; 5 hours before the EC got their results; so by 7:00pm we knew which constituencies we had won.”
He said the EC’s confirmation of compromise of its electronic results transmission process called for appropriate measures to be taken to determine the accuracy of the final results declared.
“The EC were inputting the same figures into its system, but at some point the results started changing. Thankfully, Charlotte Osei [EC Chairperson] said their system had been compromised; and I think she actually agreed with us so we are going to court, we open the ballot boxes and go for manual count,” he added.
NPP’s claims false – NDC
Meanwhile, the Western Regional secretary of the National Democratic Congress NDC), Joe Nelson, has called on the public to ignore the claims of the NPP saying they have no basis for their demands.
According to him, the NDC won genuinely in the recently held polls in the constituencies in question.
He noted that, in some constituencies that include Amenfi Central, which is being contended by the NPP, the NDC won after an open recount requested by the NDC.
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By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @jnyabor