NPP replies EC over initials removal

The opposition New Patriotic Party says the Electoral Commission’s attention was drawn to the removal of party’s initials from the parliamentary ballot papers, but the Commission failed to act on it.

“We again noticed that and quickly asked for it to be reinstated, only to be informed by the Commission’s supervisors that it was too late for the initials to be included,” the party said in a statement.

The NPP in the Ashanti region yesterday rejected ballot papers for the parliamentary elections because the party’s initials –NPP- was missing on the ballot whereas the others had theirs on.

The Commission in the evening absorbed itself from any blame, explaining that the party had rather specifically requested for that to be included on the presidential ballot.

But the NPP’s statement issued on Tuesday said the party first noticed different inscriptions of the party on the EC’s notice of polls.

“Whilst for instance the Notice of Poll in the Asante Akyem North Constituency had in the blue portion of the NPP symbol “MOTTO: DEVELOPMENT IN FREEDOM”, another one for Kwadaso had ” NPP: DEVELOPMENT IN FREEDOM”.

But both had NPP written beneath the symbol and all of these are public and copies can be verified.”



The statement added, “The NPP supervisors quickly drew the Commission’s attention at the printing houses to correct this anomaly. In doing this correction, the NPP initials beneath the symbol was also removed.”

It maintained that, “At no point did NPP supervisors at the printing houses express satisfaction/approval over the removal of Party initials from the Parliamentary Notice of Poll and ballot sheets as is being suggested by the Electoral Commission.”