NPP Election Petition: Jake, others still dreaming

General News of Thursday, 10 January 2013

Source: The Republic

Npp Leaders Meeting

…As they tickle Akufo Addo’s Followers

Two days after the President, John Dramani Mahama has been sworn in as the substantive fouth President of the fourth Republic, some officials of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), are still day dreaming that there will be another presidential swearing in ceremony sooner than 2017.

At a press conference organised and addressed yesterday in Accra by the beleaguered Chairman of the NPP, Jake Obetsebi Lamptey, he categorically stated that His Excellency John Mahama is an illegitimate President and that the defeated flagbearer of the NPP, Nana Akufo Addo is rather the winner of the 2012 Presidential election.

Ironically, the NPP chairman said his party is being careful to avoid making statements that could be seen as prejudicial to their claim before the Supreme Court.

Soon before the declaration of Mr. John Mahama as the President-elect, the NPP begun making claims of electoral fraud against the Electoral Commission, the body mandated to officiate elections in Ghana and the ruling party.

According to the NPP, the Electoral Commission (EC) has connived with the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to add more than one million illegitimate votes to ensure John Dramani Mahama emerges the winner of the elections.

However, the claims of the NPP have been that stupefied by accounts made by both domestic and international observers which cleared the election as free fair and transparent.

In fact, both domestic and international media have credited the 2012 General Election as the most credible ever in the history of Ghana, thus raising doubts over claims by the opposition NPP of irregularities and wrong doings by the EC.

Non-the-less, the NPP subsequently filed a delinquent petition before the Supreme Court and made their available grounds of their claim to the public.

Subsequent to the filing of petition to the Supreme Court by the NPP, the NDC has also filed a request to be joined to the proceedings yet the defeated flagbearer of the NPP, Nana Akufo Addo has opposed the request.

The Republic has learnt that the Supreme Court is to determine on the ruling NDC’s request today.

Meanwhile, the EC has also responded to the petition filed by the New Patriotic Party, denying all but one of the NPP’s claims seriatim, a development that has forced the NPP and its desperate chairman to come out with another bizarre press conference to appeal to its major focal audience, the court of public opinion and their disillusioned supporters.

According to the EC, the petition filed by the NPP has no merit. The EC has since indicated its readiness to defend the credibility of the 2012 election results with credible and invaluable evident.