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Politics of Saturday, 15 January 2005

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NDC Divided Over Bid To Contest Results

The Opposition NDC seems to be divided over the issue of contesting the December presidential elections in court as General Secretary of the party, Bede Ziedeng and Professor Mills? communications director, Rojo Mettle Nunoo give conflicting accounts.

Earlier in the week, a group of NDC ranking members led by Mr. Mettle Nunoo addressed a press conference that the party is going to court to contest the results of the December presidential elections.

He said the NDC would call for a re-collation of the results because of what it perceives to be widespread irregularities in the conduct of the polls.

He told Joy FM in an interview that the NDC as a party hasn?t nursed the thought of going to court on the elections.

?The NDC as a party has not come out with a clear decision that we are going to court, what we have done is collect and collate the results that has been announced at the branch, constituency, regional and national level, and if at the end of our collation we come to the conclusion that there is something wrong and that we have a case to go to court, we certainly will advise the flag bearer Prof J.A Mills to go to court? he said.

Mr Ziedeng said the flag bearer would have to go to court based on all that they have collated.

Commenting on Dr Rojo Mettle Nunoo, Mr Ziedeng said Mr Mettle-Nunoo had the reason to doubt the authenticity of the results that came in because he was present at the operations room of the Electoral Commission (EC.)

Mr. Ziedeng, however, attempted to defend Rojo Mettle Nunoo by blaming media publications on the subject matter of the press conference.

?No statement has come from the NDC, and the NDC has a way of coming out with its statement, stressing that Mr. Mettle Nunoo had a discussion on radio and made statements to that effect but not a statement from the NDC, he said.

? We are under no obligation to go out and deny what Mr. Mettle Nunoo has said because in any case we were collecting and collating results?, he said.

Final results released by the electoral commission gave President Kufuor 52.4 per cent of the total votes cast as against Prof. Mills?s 44.6 percent.

The two other presidential candidates, Dr. Edward Mahama and George Aggudey, polled 1.9 and 0.99 per cent respectively.