NPP’s Reckless Manoeuvrings

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) is bent on overturning the 2012 electoral mandate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) at all cost, hence the opposition party’s resolve to adopt ‘the end justifies the means’ tactic. That is the reason the party has been engaging in all manner of reckless manoeuvrings over the last month or so.

First, it was an emphatic statement by the party’s leadership, spearheaded by the chairman, Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey that the election was fraudulently rigged for NDC’s John Dramani Mahama.

To make its dubious claim look authentic, the party went to the extent of manufacturing its own results in a number of constituencies as evidence of the so-called fraud. This was done with the singular purpose of hoodwinking the people of Ghana into believing the blatant falsehood.

They claimed for instance that in some polling stations in the country, as much as 16,000 and in some other cases, 10,000 votes were stolen from Nana Akufo-Addo, the opposition party’s candidate and added to President John Mahama’s votes.

When the Electoral Commission exposed the deliberate falsehood by proven the NPP wrong through the full publication of the true results it used in determining the eventual winner, the party has decided to now claim widespread irregularities in the elections other than its initial claim that specific numbers of votes were stolen from Akufo-Addo for John Mahama at specific polling stations across the country.

One would have thought that as the NPP finally found its way to the Supreme Court, after three long weeks, to challenge the results, the party would leave the matter for the court to decide. They again proved everybody wrong. The three petitioners, Nana Akufo-Addo, the twice defeated NPP flagbearer together with his running mate, Dr Mahamud Bawumia and chairman of the party, Mr Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, decided to hold a press conference where the merit of the case which was filed less than an hour earlier was thoroughly discussed. They did not stop there. They also took it upon themselves to discuss details of the response filed by the Electoral Commission at another press conference addressed yet again by Jake.

Then was NDC’s response in a joinder motion which the petitioners are up in arms against.

As if that was not enough, the NPP legal team decided to raise objection to one of the judges on the panel to hear the NDC application that would pave way for the substantive case to the tackled.

When the court through the lead judge directed that the objection be made by formal application, the party, having realised the enormous public resentment it is generating against itself as a result of its ill-fated attempt to intimidate the judges, has said it is no longer going to pursue its objection to the judge on the panel.

One line runs though all these reckless manoeuvrings by the NPP. The party is drowning, as far as its challenge of the 2012 electoral result is concerned, and desperately trying to hold onto a straw.