General Secretary for the National Democratic Congress and witness for the 1st and 3rd Respondents in the ongoing Presidential Election Petition in giving his evidence in chief at the Supreme Court, has backed the petitioners case on most of the major irregularities identified by the petitioners.
Mr. Asiedu Nketiah made the concessions while being led in evidence by Counsel for the NDC, Tsatsu Tsikata on the 1st day of his appearance in the witness box as the petitioners had indicated that subject to the results of the ongoing KPMG audit, they had closed their case.
Mr. Asiedu Nketiah, while speaking stated that all the parties and participating candidates before the elections agreed as was also contained in the law that every voter must be verified by the biometric verification device before he or she is allowed to vote.
He acknowledged that indeed it was for this reason that the parties also established that in the event a biometric verification device broke down in the course of the election, the device had to be replaced at the affected polling station and that in the event that that was not possible, voting at the station had to be postponed to the next day.
He noted that there was no circumstance per their agreement and laws which allowed voting to go on without prior biometric verification.
On the issue of presiding officer�s signature, Mr. Asiedu Nketiah again stated that the presiding officer�s signature was very necessary and that the presiding officer had to sign the statement of poll and declaration of results form (pink sheet) before the results are declared.
Mr. Asiedu Nketiah indeed admitted that there were a number of polling stations where the presiding officers� signature was absent on the declaration form but said that once the polling agents had witnessed the form, there was no problem if the presiding officer didn�t sign.
On over voting, Mr. Asiedu Nketiah could not give a clear and cogent answer on the irregularity as had been defined by the petitioners. He suggested that even if more ballots were found in the ballot box at the close of voting than ballots issued to voters, it could not be said to be over voting or wrong if the ballots in the box did not exceed the voters� register at the polling station.
He also said that even if the ballots in the ballot box exceed the number of ballots issued to voters on Election Day, it was alright as long as all the ballots in the ballot box had the stamp of the electoral commission.
Mr. Asiedu Nketiah in giving his testimony also stated that he can confirm that no issue of over voting occurred in all the 26,002 polling stations across the country, defying the electoral commission�s admission that indeed a few polling stations were annulled as a result of over voting and voting without biometric verification and also his own Counsel�s attempt to show that over voting occurred in more polling stations than the petitioners had stated including some areas in the petitioner�s stronghold.
�My Lords, I can state that there was nowhere in all the 26,000 polling stations where over-voting took place� was what he averred on the issue of over voting.
Per his understanding of over voting, Mosquito insisted that allegations in that respect were untrue.
�My Lord I�m saying this because we have come to know over-voting to mean an occurrence where the number of votes found in the ballot box exceeds the number of people who are entitled to vote at that polling station, so that clearly is my understanding of over-voting and I do not have any indication of this happening in any of the 26,002 polling stations which were involved in the 2012 elections�, General Mosquito said.
Aside the allegations of over voting as filed in the affidavits of the petitioners was also the case of voting without biometric verification, duplicate serial numbers on ballot papers and unsigned electoral records (pink sheets).
Priding in his 34 year experience in the electioneering process of the country, the NDC general secretary denied the allegations and disclosed that the petitioners� key witness insistence on allegations of over voting was his first time of hearing about that phenomenon.
It will be recalled that the petitioners� key witness, Dr. Bawumia, in his evidence-in-chief gave signals of the incidence of over-voting because ballots tallied at the end of the voting process exceeded the number of ballots issued at certain polling stations.
��That was my first time of hearing over-voting being defined that way in all my 34 years of experience in elections in this country�, he said.
Concerning the issue of the failure to record numbers in the column provided on the pink sheets, an indicator of the number of ballots issued, Mosquito flimsily replied that that �they were clerical errors� and in his view could not have had any telling consequence on the final results since all agents of the various political parties which participated in the elections appended their signatures. ��My Lord I think that if no papers were issued then the elections couldn�t have taken place at all so I think that, that must be a clerical error�.
In his responses, General Mosquito said the allegations of voting without biometric verification, duplicate serial numbers and unsigned electoral records which were among the propelling factors of violations in the election process according to the New Patriotic Party (NPP), and which forms the basis for which they were challenging the election results were figments of their own imagination.
He said the Second Respondent, Electoral Commission, took stock of about 400 polling stations across the country where the biometric verification machines failed on the day of voting, December 7, 2012 and based on a review in that regard, voting continued on December 8 with fully functional biometric verification equipment.
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