By Iddi Yire
Accra, Dec 20, GNA – President-elect John Dramani Mahama has urged the Electoral Commission (EC) to act in a principled manner with regards to the issue of the nine outstanding parliamentary constituencies, whose results declaration are still in dispute.
“There are nine constituencies in dispute, and we think that the Electoral Commission should act in a principled manner. You cannot change the rules when it suits you and apply different rules when different circumstances exist,” Mr. Mahama stated.
The President-elect, who won decisively in the December 7 presidential election, made the call when a group of African diplomatic community members paid a courtesy call on him in Accra, to congratulate him on his victory.
He cited the case of Techiman South Constituency in the 2020 general election, where the EC came out clearly that if a declaration had been made, it was not its duty to adjudicate it and that the courts were the right place to go.
President-elect Mahama said: “And so, if a declaration has been made, it doesn’t matter under what circumstance.
“We are saying that some were under duress. In the case of Techiman South, it was under duress. There were soldiers in the collation room. There was chaos in the collation room when the declaration was made. And the same arguments were passed that there should be a re-collation.”
He added: “The Electoral Commission said no, there can’t be any re-collation once a declaration has been made. In the same circumstances, declarations have been made, if people have a grievance, they must go to the courts and redress those grievances there.
“We don’t think that the goalposts should be shifted depending on who is at the other end of the stick.”
He said there was one case (Nsawam Adoagyiri Constituency) in which there was no declaration; saying, “We can understand that. And so, the Electoral Commission has to make a determination.
“What happens? Is there going to be a rerun? How are they going to be able to collate those results? And so, we think that there must be fairness and justice in everything that we do, and so that’s a concern.”
Mr. Mahama said they hoped that those issues would be resolved as quickly as possible so that Ghanaians know what the final outcome of the election was.
The President-elect told the envoys that sometimes bureaucracy had a way of slowing things down, which makes some of them get frustrated.
However, he assured them that he was going to have a very open door so that they could help them remove any obstacles that were in the way of the good relations and economic cooperation that exists between their countries and Ghana.
GNA