NDC Conspiring With EC & Some Media Houses To Rig The Election - NPP

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has called on the Electoral Commission (EC) to suspend its intended declaration of the presidential results and conduct an audit of the collated figures as well as the counts from the biometric verification machines before the electoral results are finally released. This according to the NPP was because it had uncovered systematic �substantial discrepancies� in results from various collation centres as compared with official tally figures from the Electoral Commission (EC). Addressing the media in Accra Sunday, the Chairman of the party, Mr Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey, said the party had written to the EC Chairman for an urgent meeting concerning the issues it had raised. �Considering the closeness of the polls, this error is very significant and goes to the heart of the credibility of the results. Indeed, we have enough concrete evidence to show that the 2012 presidential election was won by our candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo,� he said. Holding and brandishing white, pink and blue sheets as some of the evidence gathered, he described the discrepancies as systematically planned to steal the votes and cited an example from the Dome Kwabenya Constituency where he said 15,000 votes was allegedly, illegally added to candidate John Mahama�s votes. Mr Obestebi-Lamptey told the media that in the Savelugu Constituency, candidate John Mahama of the NDC polled 21,165 votes according to the EC at the collation centre, however 31, 165 votes had allegedly been falsely declared for him. Surrounded by party bigwigs and a large number of both local and international media, the NPP Chairman alleged that some of the criminal acts was done after the collated results were declared at the constituency. �We have noticed a pattern of fraud, where subtracted numbers of votes are either added to the NDC or subtracted from the NPP presidential candidate,� He expressed surprise that some media houses have also been announcing figures from the constituency collated centres that had been tampered with when compared with figures from tallying sheets which are called �blue sheets� and this was giving a highly misleading picture to the people of Ghana. �For example, Peace FM and Joy FM have both announced 10,000 more votes for John Mahama, the NDC Presidential Candidates, than what was declared for him at the Ledzokuku collation centre, giving him 63,210 (60.53 per cent), instead of 53,210�, he alleged and stressed that such systematic manipulation of the figures across the country casts serious doubt on the credibility of the results.