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My written address on the
NPP’s petition
By Dr. Michael J.K. Bokor
Monday, August 5, 2013
My good friends, I suppose by now, those of us who have access
to the written addresses of the counsel for the NPP petitioners
and the respondents, respectively, have scrutinized them to know
how the tide will flow henceforth.
As we wait for the oral submissions by counsel on August 7
(Wednesday), I will submit my take on the petition for further
interrogation. The more I reflect on issues, the more it occurs
to me that what the NPP petitioners have been doing all this
while is nothing but a calculated attempt to give our democracy
a very bad name.
The insistence on pink sheet exhibits for fighting President
Mahama, the Electoral Commission, and the NDC is an act in bad
faith. Nowhere have the petitioners led evidence to show that
what actually happened in the course of voting was characterized
by irregularity or fraud by the respondents, which might be the
basis for their challenging the outcome of Election 2012. And
the pith of general elections is the balloting that takes place.
If irregularities characterize voting, then, any challenge of
the outcome is legitimate and supportable. Not in this case
raised by the NPP petitioners.
Furthermore, by assuming that the general elections must be
error-free, they have placed the issues in an angelic realm for
fallible human beings to tackle, which is not backed by reality
anywhere in the world. General elections everywhere are
characterized by challenges but if no major fraudulent event
happens in the course of voting, the results stand. Yet, these
NPP petitioners see things differently because of their
deep-seated desire to turn our democracy upside down—entering
political office through the back-door!
No wonder, Dr. Bawumia had said several times in responding to
Tsatsu Tsikata’s cross-examination that somebody mistakes should
not affect another person’s Presidency. Turned the other way
round, Justice Atuguba’s own wise crack that the Supreme Court
would not visit the sins of the respondents’ counsel (late
submission of his written address) on his client comes to mind.
And as I have argued all along—and been vindicated by
revelations in the course of evidence presentation,
confirmation, and refutation by the various counsel and
witnesses—the EC faced challenges in conducting the elections.
It wasn’t anything strange to prompt the calling down of
hellfire on the heads of the EC Chairman or President Mahama;
neither was it a warrant for the over-extension of issues as has
been done by the petitioners to the extent as to demand that the
Supreme Court should nullify over 4 million votes of innocent
and conscientious Ghanaian voters for their Akufo-Addo to
realize his long-held ambition of becoming Ghana’s President.
Despite these challenges, all well-meaning observers could
conclude that Election 2012 was a huge success and a
far-reaching improvement on the procedures used for previous
ones. All well-meaning observers except the NPP petitioners to
whom the pink sheets matter more than the actual voting that
took place and which resulted in votes being collected,
collated, and released for us to know who won or who lost. The
NPP petitioners saw only the shadow and not the reality itself!!
The challenges at Election 2012 clearly portrayed the weaknesses
in our electoral system—whether the calibre of people employed
to supervise the elections or the EC’s own
strategies/procedures, or modus operandi for performing its
constitutionally mandated functions. I will settle on this part
as the most pronounced of the weaknesses in the electoral
system, which automatically calls for electoral reforms, not a
time-wasting fishing adventure in the dark chambers of the
Supreme Court.
Yes, we need electoral reforms—which the EC itself has
identified as a major requirement for our democracy to advance.
Interestingly, the EC had begun reviewing the 2012 elections at
various forums but couldn’t go further because of the petition.
Reviewing the general elections has been the EC’s major
post-election effort to determine what went right or wrong and
to put in place measures to curtail any recurrence of the
negative trends. It has been doing so since it held the first
elections in 1992 to usher in the 4th Republic and is expected
to continue far into the future for as long as our democracy
survives.
Electoral reforms don’t need this kind of petition or prolonged
court hearing to be effected. That is where my beef with the NPP
petitioners and their benighted followers thickens. Could the EC
not have been helped to reform the electoral process without
this Supreme Court hearing?
Was it the Supreme Court that forced the EC to establish the
Inter-Party Advisory Committee as a “political think-tank” to
bring together the various party representatives to hob-nob on
pertinent issues affecting partisan politics in the country? Or
was it the Supreme Court that ordered that the EC should
introduce the innovative mechanism of biometric verification to
curtail electoral fraud (double registration and double voting,
among others)?
So, what about the electoral situation couldn’t the EC have
tackled to help our democracy grow without this hassle of a
petition hearing at the Supreme Court? And for nearly 8 months
now, being telecast at a huge cost to the country?
There must be a lot wrong with this petition-based approach. We
have already proved to the petitioners that their main purpose
is to twist arms and get themselves into political office
through the back-door after being rejected by the electorate. It
won’t happen because there is no basis in truth for it.
There is ample proof that the petitioners are not pursuing their
cause based on evidence of irregularity before, during, and
after balloting. They have not told us that voting was
characterized by irregularities (ineligible people voting,
stuffing or snatching of ballot boxes to corrupt results,
hooliganism at the polling stations by machomen to prevent
voters in favourable electoral areas from voting, etc.). In
general elections, when voting goes on smoothly, nobody has any
cause to doubt the outcome.
Although the petitioners initially made wild allegations that
the EC colluded with President Mahama to perpetrate electoral
fraud (e.g., padding of votes for President Mahama, swapping of
Akufo-Addo’s votes for President Mahama, doctoring of results to
favour President Mahama, passing the results through an Israeli
company for doctoring before transmission to the EC
Headquarters, etc.), they changed their minds even before the
hearing of their petition began. They no longer insisted on
fraud or stealing of Akufo-Addo’s votes.
Instead, they turned to clerical/transpositional errors on the
pink sheets and insisted that they had a good case because “The
evidence is in the pink sheets”. It is with this mentality that
they have been arguing their case. They have not on any single
occasion referred to any evidence pertaining to what exactly
happened in the course of voting or counting of ballots to
determine the victor (President Mahama) and the losers (Akufo-Addo
and all the other Presidential Candidates in tow).
The NPP petitioners haven’t stated any single example of fraud
at any polling station or the EC Headquarters. They haven’t
provided any testimony from any of their polling agents,
Presiding Officers, election monitors or themselves to confirm
what they consider as irregularities or violations of statutory
orders pertaining to the elections.
They have not told us that any of their own party’s polling
agents or representatives at any of the 26,002 polling stations
throughout the country protested against any irregularity that
they either personally observed or reported to them. The party’s
accredited polling agents signed the election declaration forms
to indicate their acquiescence that the elections were without
fault and the results a true reflection of the voters’ political
will. Yet, Dr. Bawumia’s testimony discounted this truth and
even impugned the integrity of those polling agents themselves.
All because of the morbid desire to hinge their case on clerical
errors in pink sheets.
The NPP petitioners never told us that any of their polling
agents was privy to an irregularity at any of the polling
stations (even where they also voted and monitored proceedings).
Instead, they are insisting on the swan song sung by Dr. Bawumia
(“You and I were not there”) and his stentorian cacophony that
“I only used the data once in my analysis” in defence of their
petition.
Thus far, the NPP petitioners haven’t even referred to the
actual happenings in the balloting to fight their cause.
Instead, they have produced volumes of pink sheet exhibits to
say that they had enough water-tight evidence therein to win the
case. Based on this assumption, they have produced a 175-page
written address (a summary?) of their pink-sheet case, raising
the big question: 175 pages of rally ground talk?
Clearly, this petition lacks what can win the day for the NPP. I
am more than convinced that the Supreme Court judges will go
beyond the level of pink sheets to consider the REAL issues that
general elections entail or demand and make their decision
therefrom. General elections go beyond pink sheets!
Mind you, I am not against any effort to challenge the outcome
of general elections in the country. Far from that. But I am
against the kind of challenge that the NPP people have put up
just because I consider it as hollow and self-serving, not
designed to ensure electoral reforms or sharpen the rough edges
of our democracy. It’s just a matter of seeking to put a new
wine in an old wine bottle.
The hot potatoes are to many for us to handle. We don’t need to
waste all this time and resources listening to lamentations if,
indeed, we are to brainstorm for electoral reforms. And
democracies grow on the basis of electoral reforms, not
self-serving wishful thinking as it is in the case of the NPP
petitioners. Putting everything together, then, this petition is
worthless and must be dismissed as inconsequential to what
Ghana's democracy needs—electoral reforms, not the placing of
Akufo-Addo in power "at all cost".
I am Dr. Michael J.K. Bokor; and I approve of this submission!
I shall return…
• E-mail: mjbokor@yahoo.com
• Join me on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/mjkbokor to
continue the conversation.
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