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General News of Tuesday, 9 December 2008

Source: jfm

Contentious Weija Result Declared

The raging controversy surrounding the Weija Constitutncy has been settled with the announcement of the results.

The announcement was made amidst protestation by the NDC Parliamentary candidate who thought he deserved to win.Controversy rocked the polling process when partial results indicated that the NDC and its Parliamentary candidate had won the constituency.

According to JOYFM when the polling center votes were being collated, the NDC candidate raised questions about the results of 11 centres.

Based on the issues raised, the presiding returning officer suggested that the votes of those 11 centres should not be tallied.

Without those centres the NDC and its candidate had a clear lead. While in the process, the District Electoral Officer arrived at the scene and rejected the idea that all the ballots of the 11 polling stations should rejected. He contended that since the results sheets were signed by all party agents at the polling station, it meant they agreed with the figures.

Therefore there was no justification to reject the ballots of the centres in question because a candidate raised questions. After all his agent(s) were there when the ballots were counted.

When the 11 stations were added, the incumbent MP, Ms Shirley Ayorko Botchway won handsomely.

But the NDC candidate does not understand why the initial decision not to include the votes should be overturned by the District Electoral Officer.

For now, the NPP’s Ayorkor Botchway has retained her seat polling 63, 337 votes with her NDC contender obtaining 51, 961.

For the presidential ballots, Nana Addo of the NPP obtained 62, 444 as against 54, 304 for the NDC’s Prof. Atta Mills.