Electoral Commission admits errors in results

The percentage of valid votes cast for the two Presidential candidates now going into the run-off elections on December 28 has suffered slight drops after rechecking of results by the Electoral Commission.

Mr. J. A. Kufuor of the New Patriotic Party, whose share was 48.35 after the initial announcement, dropped to 48.17 whilst Prof. John Evans Atta Mills of the national Democratic Congress went down from 44.85 to 44.54.

Announcing this at a news briefing in Accra on Wednesday, Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, Electoral Commissioner, said Dr. Edward Mahama of the People’s National Convention went up from 2.5 to 2.9 per cent.

The briefing was in reaction to the news conference held by Mr. Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, National Campaign Manager of the NPP in which he alleged that there were some discrepancies and errors in the results published by the EC on December 11.

He said the global picture that had emerged had “in no way whatsoever altered the initial picture of the need for a run-off election” between the two candidates.

He noted that in “compiling the results of an election of the scale we had, which involved 200 constituencies and seven candidates, errors can easily occur even under the best of circumstances which could be corrected only with checking and rechecking of the figures until one is finally sure that they are not only correct but are also in the correct places, he said.

This is precisely the reason why election results are first given as provisional and also the reason why in Ghana we give copies of the same results to the political parties, so that they can also collate the results and call the Commission’s attention to any discrepancies that may ensue as between their compilation and ours.

“In any case, ladies and gentlemen of the press, before we received Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey’s letter, some people had quietly called our attention to some errors of inputting and addition, and we had also on our own already begun the rechecking process.

“In spite of the lack of clarity concerning the alleged differences with our figures, the Commission incorporated the markings indicated by Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey’s committee into our re-checking process.

“Ladies and Gentlemen: I wish to conclude by making three inter-related statements. First, by law the Chairman of the Electoral Commission is the returning officer for the presidential election. I do not intend to cede that responsibility to any officer of the Commission.

“I assure all stakeholders and the Ghanaian people that I will discharge that responsibility in good conscience and with integrity.

“Secondly, I consider it to be unprofessional and unethical for any media establishment to purport to declare the winner of our presidential election without reference to the Chairman of the Electoral Commission.

“Thirdly, the Ghanaian people have a right to expect our political parties and leaders to conduct themselves in such a manner as to ensure not only the peaceful conduct of elections but also the orderly and systematic collation of election results”