NDC will abandon court proceedings to challenge 2020 election results – Hadzide predicts

Deputy Information Minister, Pius Hadzide, has said the National Democratic Congress (NDC) is likely to abandon its challenge of the outcome of the 2020 elections in court should the process start.

Mr Hadzide told Citi News that NDC’s refusal to accept defeat in the just-ended polls is merely a gimmick to assuage the feelings of its supporters.

“This is clearly a normal trick in the book. That when political parties lose elections, the leadership, in an attempt to manage the feelings and expectations of members and supporters, engage in some of these gimmicks. So, if you are not careful you might fall for them,” he said.

Figures declared by the Electoral Commission (EC), show President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has won the December 7 polls with a little over 51% of total votes, but former President and presidential candidate of the NDC, John Dramani Mahama, has described the outcome of the polls as flawed and stolen for the incumbent New Patriotic Party.

“The facts and figures on the pink sheets available to us indicate that numerous steps have been taken to manipulate the elections in favour of the incumbent president,” Mr Mahama said.

He said the NDC “will take legitimate steps to reverse this travesty of justice,” which many have interpreted to mean the party will challenge the results at the Supreme Court.

However, Mr Hadzide said “even if the NDC starts the court proceedings they will abandon it because this is much ado about nothing.”

He said he was not surprised the NDC’s allegations that the results of the elections have been stolen.

“I am not surprised by their conduct. When President Kufuor won the elections in 2004, we heard the same narrative. In fact, they started some court proceedings, just that they did not continue. We believe that we had a strong case in 2012 so we did not abandon it,” the Deputy Information Minister said.

Although the EC has been criticised by a section of the public for initial errors in the results it released, Mr Hadzide said errors are part of humans and urged the public to indulge the elections management body.