NPP should go to court if they are confident- Haruna Iddrisu

Communications Minister Haruna Iddrisu has challenged the leaders of the opposition New Patriotic Party to take their grievances to court if indeed they are confident that their figures will support their case.

He said the NPP should stop demonstrating against the election’s outcome, which it claims was characterised by fraud, and instead take their grievances to court.

He questioned the strength of the NPP’s case because they were expected to appear before the Supreme Court last Friday or Saturday but have yet to do so. He also accused the NPP of trying to incite their base by inventing figures that will not stand up to scrutiny in court.

He made these comments on Metro TV’s Good Morning Ghana programme, where he appeared alongside the Executive Director of the Danquah Institute, Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko.

Mr. Haruna, who is the also the Member of Parliament Tamale South, argued that the NPP must accept the reality that the popularity of John Mahama and the manifesto that he presented to the electorate won for him the presidency and a majority of parliamentary seats for the NDC.

John Mahama, he explained, won the support of the nation after only 90 days on the campaign trail while NPP candidate Nana Akufo-Addo had effectively been campaigning since 2009.

For his part, Gabby replied that it remains the NPP’s position that President-elect Mahama did not win the election fairly, adding that he is extremely confident that the figures in the NPP’s possession will invalidate the election’s results in front of the whole world.

At the moment, he said, the NPP has only officially released figures that concern the discrepancy between the results reported by the media and those declared by the Electoral Commission (EC), but the truth will emerge regarding the NDC’s fraudulent activities.

Both men agreed on the importance of keeping the peace, with Mr. Otchere-Darko arguing that the NPP leadership has responsibly instructed its followers to follow the law and avoid violence.

The Communications Minister also lauded the introduction of biometric registration and verification to Ghana’s electoral system, adding that although the system is currently not full-proof, it will enhance fairness and transparency in future elections.

Finally, Mr. Otchere-Darko claimed to have concrete evidence that voting took place without verification and argued that an election’s outcome should be determined by the voters, not those counting the votes.

Mr. Iddrisu replied that the unverified votes were too few to change the election’s outcome and took exception to the idea that he or other members of his party won the election on doctored figures.

On the contrary, he said, it was the New Patriotic Party (NPP) that benefited from voting irregularities.

He explained that when the EC postponed voting at polling stations whose verification machines had broken down, some polling stations had already begun counting votes, effectively disenfranchising voters there by making them ineligible to return to vote the next day.

This, he insisted, worked in the NPP’s favour.