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YED, Press Release
June 25, 2013
SPEAKING POINTS ON PETITION
The Background & Numbers Needed
Having failed to destroy the petitioners’ case or to put up a
good
defense for themselves on why the petitioners’ case shouldn’t be
sustained, the last tactic the NDC and EC have adopted is to:
o use technicalities to get the court to throw the case out
because of mislabeling of exhibits. But, mislabeling of exhibits
is a curable defect. The evidence is before the court and the
polling station names, codes and serial numbers are more than
enough to lead them to the exact polling station. This their
strategy to use technicalities to deny the people justice will
not wash.
They also want to get the court to deny us justice if the
exhibits
are below the 11,138 that we are now relying on. Ridiculous!
What if the exhibits are also more than 11,138? What is
important is that we have in evidence enough evidence of
violations to render the declared results invalid!
Another NDC strategy is that if their technicalities fail then
they
the court should still not overturn the results to make Nana
Addo the President and should rather opt for the whole election
to be
nullified. We want the court to be bold to the truth!
• It should be noted very clearly that the Court as they have
repeatedly stated cannot and will not throw the case out even if
it
turns out that the petitioners submitted less than 11,000 pink
sheets and this has been acknowledged by the NDC lawyers
themselves. When you go to court claiming I owe you $10,000 and
the court finds that in fact I only owe you $5,000, I am still
ordered to pay what I owe.
• As the court has stated, any shortage would just mean that the
court would have to restrict itself to the number submitted. So
if it turns out that the petitioners submitted 10,000, that is
what the court would deal with in giving a judgment; if it turns
out its 9,000, that is what the court would restrict itself to;
and so on.
• What the respondents are failing to notice is that the
petitioners
need less than 2,000 pink sheets out of the 11,000 plus to bring
john Mahama down and trigger a run off as annulling some 2,000
polling stations in the polling stations being challenged would
mean that John Mahama would not have received the necessary
50%+1 needed for a victory as was declared on December 9th
• This is because all the petitioners need to do is to be able
to take off 154,000 votes from the total of John Mahama declared
by Afari Gyan, to see him below the 50%+1 required tally for an
outright win and any of the 4 major categories if sustained by
the Supreme Court would ensure this.
• Now let’s look at some scenarios
• The category of irregularity with the lowest number of polling
stations being challenged is the category of the “No presiding
officer signature” where the petitioners are praying the court
to annul results from 1,739 polling stations with a total of
705,305 votes.
Nonetheless, if the court upholds the argument of the
petitioners and annuls only these 1,739 polling station, that
would see John Mahama tumbling down from the 50.7% declared for
him by Dr. Afari Gyan, to 49.52% and about 300,000 votes down
from securing the required 50%+1votes needed for a first round
victory. If sustained, this category alone would see a deduction
of 479,508 votes from the total of John Mahama.
• The Petitioners are challenging 1,826 Polling Stations with a
total of 791,423 votes in the over voting category. Yet, this
alone is also enough to bring John Mahama down below the
required mark and trigger a run-off. Assuming the court throws
out everything and upholds only the category of over voting,
John Mahama would be brought down from the 50.7% declared for
him by Afari Gyan to 49.37%; meaning he would have
to step aside for a run-off to be held. If sustained, this
category
alone would see a deduction of 536,686 from the total of John
Mahama.
• The petitioners are challenging 2,240 polling stations with a
total
of 856,172 votes in the category of Voting without biometric
verification. Yet, this alone, if sustained would bring John
Mahama down from the 50.7% declared for him by Afari Gyan to
49.16%. Nana Akufo –Addo, in this case would have 49.34%; that
is, if only this category of voting without biometric
verification is sustained by the Court. If sustained, this
category would see a deduction of 590,839 from the total votes
of John Mahama.
• So really the petitioners need just under 2,000 pink sheets or
so to get Mahama off the seat.
• Again, the petitioners need just 3,500 Pink Sheets to be
sustained by the Court to get Nana Akufo-Addo declared as the
outright winner of the December 7th Elections. All the
petitioners need is to annul enough votes to ensure than Nana
Akufo-Addo gets a 200,000 margin over John Mahama to ensure the
50%+1 mark and this is achieved by a combination of any two
categories.
• For example, a combination of the over voting and No biometric
verification categories has 3,525 polling stations. Should the
Court sustain these two categories, annulling the 3,525 polling
stations would see Nana Addo having 50.47% (more than the 50%+1
required) as against John Mahama’s 48.06. Nana Akufo-Addo in
this case would have a 230,000 margin over John Mahama.
• It should be noted that the over voting and voting without
biometric verification categories are really twin categories
because technically every incident of no biometric verification
in a polling station, leads to over voting per Afari Gyan’s own
definition of over voting on December 5th, 2012, two days before
the election.
• Afari Gyan on December 5th stated that every polling station
where the number of ballots in the box at the end of the voting
was more than the number of people properly verified by the
biometric device to vote would be annulled.
• LET ME ALSO SHARE WITH YOU SOME OF THE FIRM DECISIONS THAT
WE HAVE TAKEN TOGETHER WITH THE POLITICAL PARTIES: NVNV – NO
VERIFICATION NO
VOTING.AND BY VERIFICATION WE MEAN EVERYBODY WILL HAVE TO BE
VERIFIED BIOMETRICALLY. WE HAVE AGREED IN PRINCIPLE THAT WHERE
THE VOTES FOUND
IN THE BALLOT BOX OUTNUMBER THE PERSONS VERIFIED TO VOTE THE
RESULTS OF THAT POLLING STATION WILL BE CANCELLED.
Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Djan @ Ghana International Press Centre,
Accra, 5th
December 2012
• Therefore, all the petitioners need is to get the Court to
sustain
only two of the four main categories – over voting, voting
without
biometric verification, no signature of presiding officers and
duplicate serial numbers to ensure Nana Akufo-Addo gets the
required 50%+1 tally.
• Better still, if the Court upholds the petitioners case with
respect
to the three statutory irregularities – over voting, voting
without
biometric verification and no signature of the presiding officer
(which is against article 49 (3) of the 1992 Constitution); the
annulments would result in John Mahama tumbling down from the
50.7% declared for him by Afari Gyan to a new tally of 47.01%
and Nana Akufo-Addo would have a new tally of 51.53%
• It would be recalled that initially, the petitioners filed
only
challenging results from 4,709 polling stations which still
would have been enough to ensure that the Nana Akufo-Addo would
have emerged as clear winner.
• This 4,709 as was initially filed is only half of the 8,600
the NDC
themselves have hinted they have, without telling us which ones.
• The 8,600 the NDC, John Mahama and the EC have at least
confirmed they have, is more than 4 times the 2000 the
petitioners need to have John Mahama step down and trigger a
runoff and over twice the 3,500 the petitioners need to ensure
Nana Akufo – Addo is declared as the outright winner. It is
nearly double of what petitioners’ initially filed on 28
December!
KPMG
• The interim report of KPMG on the registrar’s copy has already
established that the Petitioners’ exhibits in the three core
categories of Over voting, Voting without biometric verification
and no signature of presiding officers are intact or in some
cases even in excess of what is needed as was contained in
Dr. Bawumia’s affidavit.
• “Except for some copies in the MB P series, the number of
copies of exhibits and affidavits filed in the order set out in
paragraphs 44 to 67 (of Dr bawumia’ affidavit) were either up to
or exceeded the numbers required” – KPMG Interim Report
• The only category out of the 24 multiple categories submitted
where a problem was found was the MB-P series; which refers to
exclusive instances of duplicate serial numbers; that is,
polling stations we are seeking annulled only the basis of an
occurrence of the same serial number on the pink sheet being
used in another polling station and no other irregularity.
• This Category should have had 6,381 pink sheets.
• The NDC seem to have been misled by the numbers to think that
if they can bring this category down, it can affect the case of
the petitioners. But this is the greatest self deception to have
ever
occurred.
• This category has nothing to do with any other irregularities;
and as we have already shown, any of the other irregularities –
over voting, voting without biometric verification and no
signature on their own are enough to bring Mahama down and any
two of these arealso enough to get Nana Addo in as President; so
this category really
affects nothing.
• Also interesting is the fact that because this series has so
many
numbers, no matter how you cut it down, they would be enough to
still bring Mahama down just on the basis of this category.
• For example, assuming, the NDC is even able to cut down the
number in this category by 4,000; this category would still have
2,381 pink sheets, which in any way is more than the pink sheets
in over voting, voting without biometric verification and no
signature; and which as has already been stated would be much
more than the 2000 needed to bring Mahama down.
• But cutting down the number by such huge numbers, even though
it won’t have any effect on the figures, would also not be
possible for the respondents; already, the count of Atuguba’s
MB-P series has revealed over 5,000 exhibits and we are told
that there is still another box in this category with over 1,000
pink sheets yet to be counted by KPMG.
Other Points worth Making
• This case is about violations and their numbers. Elsewhere in
Africa even though the violations were proven, there were no
numbers. For example, in the 2003 Presidential Elections in
Nigeria, the Courts annulled all the votes from Ogun State
totaling around 1.3 million; but these votes were not enough to
bring Obasanjo below the 50%+1 tally. And same happened in the
2013 Kenyan Elections where the petitioners were not able to
bring substantial numbers to bring Uhuru Kenyatta down. In our
case and as has been shown, numbers are not in
issue as we have an excess of numbers.
• The Key witness for the respondents and probably in the case
is Dr. Kwadwo Afari Gyan, Electoral Commissioner and returning
officer for the Presidential Elections. It is good and a relief
to know, that already he has supported the case of the
petitioners on almost all the key issues in contention and the
irregularities.
• Dr. Afari Gyan has agreed to our definitions of over voting
and that alone, is enough to bring Mahama down as was stated
earlier.
• Dr. Afari Gyan has also accepted that it was illegal to allow
any
person to vote without being verified and that the number of FO
voters is insignificant as they all had to be verified by the
device by their Face only.
• Dr. Afari Gyan has also accepted that if he was Presiding
Officer he would have allowed people to vote without
verification and most importantly, the Petitioners have been
able to prove through a manual of the EC that the EC indeed gave
presiding officers a discretion to allow people to vote without
verification which is against the law but which explains why so
many presiding officers allowed people to vote without
verification and why some of them even confessed on live radio
as having done so.
• The petitioners by proving this have also established that the
C3
portion of the pink sheet which was put in to create a path for
people to vote without verification, was not put there in error
as the EC trained its officers to allow the illegal act and
record it on that section and that the numbers there are a clear
record of this act.
• Dr. Afari Gyan has also confessed that he is aware that
several
people were turned away because they couldn’t be verified which
means that the Supreme Court would be acting unfairly, should it
fail to annul the polling stations where people were illegally
allowed to vote without verification.
• Dr. Afari Gyan has accepted that Signatures of Presiding
officers are needed to authenticate results and they must be
done at polling stations.
• He has also accepted that Polling Agents are mere observers as
is contained in the C.I 75 and the Presiding officer is totally
in
control of the Polling station.
• We should ask: why did he remove from CI 75 the provision
which allowed polling agents to be considered as election
officers and therefore allowed to be special voters. This meant
that NPP could no longer send out TESCON members and other
competent, trusted agents to difficult polling stations outside
of their own polling stations as agents.
• Dr. Afari Gyan has also accepted that Voters’ Register was
full of multiple registrations. This and the institution of the
illegal acts
of voting without biometric verification were done to aid
multiple
voting for John Mahama
• Pink sheets are documentary and not hearsay evidence. In
court, no form of evidence beats documentary evidence. The only
way out is to discredit their own pink sheets which they have
done in order to have the court annul the whole elections.
• In September 2011, Sulley Amadu, then head of Research and
Monitoring and now Deputy Commissioner of the EC, was reported
to have met the NDC leadership at Shai Hills. Among other
things, he is reported to have told the NDC that the only way
they could win the elections was to ensure that biometric
verification was not enforced on Election Day. But popular
pressure and the International Community forced the EC and
parliament to ensure that verification was compulsory on
Election Day. To subvert this however, the EC tried to get
political parties into a compromise so the law could be
contravened by allowing people to vote without verification. All
the political parties with the exception of the NDC however
stood their grounds and decided to go by the law – No
verification, No vote but the NDC and EC colluded to ensure they
got what they want by training
Presiding officers to allow people to vote without verification;
this
illegality was most present in NDC strongholds and polling
stations where NDC executives, knowing this subversion of the
law with the EC encouraged people to go out and do multiple
voting with the multiple registrations in the register as there
was no verification to apprehend such people. In NPP strongholds
and strongholds of other political parties however, the law was
enforced strictly and thousands of people were turned away from
voting because they could not be verified.
--
NPP Communications Directorate
NPP Headquarters, Asylum Down. Accra.
Dep. Director: Curtis Perry K. Okudzeto
(024-9679008)
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