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General News of Sunday, 11 August 2013

Source: joyonline

Even 4,487 pink sheets can unseat Mahama – Gabby

A calculative Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko says the petitioners challenging the validity of the declaration of John Mahama as President, have made such a strong case that cannot be easily dismissed.

The Executive Director of Danquah Institute says the evidence from just 4,487 polling stations used in the 2012 elections, is enough for the Supreme Court hearing Ghana’s election petition to overturn the 2012 presidential results in favour of Nana Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party, because of three reasons.

The reasons according to Gabby are: the absence of presiding officer’s signature as required by law, over-voting and voting without biometric verification. These alone could sink the presidency of John Mahama, he stated.

His comments come while a nine-member-panel of judges of the Supreme Court is preparing to give a judgment on the ongoing election petition brought before it by leading members of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).

The party is insisting that pervasive pattern of irregularities affected the results and resulted in an illegal winner of the 2012 presidential polls.

The NPP man said on Joy FM's Newsfile on Saturday that, there were instances where all three cases of irregularities occurred on the same pink sheet used to record the results of a polling station.

He claimed about 1.8 million votes were recorded from a total of 4,487 polling stations.

Calculating further, he revealed that Presidnt Mahama benefited from 1.2 million of these while Nana Akufo-Addo benefited from about 500,000 of such votes. In his view, annulling 1.8 million votes of which a huge number benefited the president, is enough to unseat John Mahama.

The evidence is difficult to assail, he suggested, saying: “You are telling me that you can look at this evidence and still make a case that the petitioners have not made their case when based on these three alone, the results could be overturned.”