Atta Mills warns against vote rigging

Accra, Jan 9, GNA - Professor John Evans Atta Mills, Flag bearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) for the Election 2008, on Wednesday warned that the party would not entertain any attempt by any political party to steal the verdict of the people in the December elections. He told journalists in Accra; "the NDC and the fair minded Ghanaians will categorically reject out of hand the fraudulent results so proclaimed and will adopt all legitimate means to seek redress to any such political misconduct".

This was at a press conference organised by the party to state their reaction to the recent occurrences in Kenya, following the general election and how it related to Ghana and the rest of Africa. Prof. Mills drew some similarities between the main cause of the Kenyan incident and the alleged "stolen verdict" in Ghana's 2004 elections, saying that in both cases, ballot papers were destroyed illegally before a possible recount.

"The similarities in the unfortunate situations in both Ghana and Kenya are too glaring to be ignored, especially as there is a high probability of their repetition in our forthcoming general elections," he said.

He accused the ruling New Patriotic Party government of creating conditions that could have brought the country close to violent confrontation at the end of the 2004 elections and assured Ghanaians that the NDC would not allow the NPP to repeat such a conduct as they did in 2004.

Prof. Mills also warned against pre-elections violence, citing the Pakistani incident in which former Prime Minister and opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was killed and urged the ruling party to ensure the safety and security of presidential and parliamentary candidates as well as all citizens in the coming elections.

Asked what the NDC was doing to avert any possibility of vote rigging in the 2008 elections, Prof. Mills replied "once bitten, twice shy." He declared his support for the Kenyan Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) led by Raila Odinga, in the bid to seek a re-run of the elections because ballot papers had been destroyed and therefore there could not be a recount.

"The NDC supports that demand as the most likely route to the determination of the unequivocal wish of Kenyans in the presidential elections - we urge that the re-elections should be supervised by the international community," he said.

He expressed his condolences to the families of the deceased and expressed the hope that peace would be restored to that country soon. Prof. Mills noted that whiles it was within the duty of President John Agyekum Kufuor as Chairman of the African Union (AU) to mediate the Kenyan crisis, the President should have first attended to the crisis in his own back yard in Bawku in the Upper West Region.

"The point is not lost on many Ghanaians that President Kufuor has not yet visited the Bawku area but has managed to visit other countries in similar difficulties," he said.