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The National Democratic Party (NDP), a breakaway faction of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), has described the just concluded parliamentary and presidential elections as "419", the infamous moniker for advance fee fraud.
The party, led by former First Lady Nana Konadu Agyemang-Rawlings, staged a press conference in Accra Wednesday to register its displeasure about the outcome of the December 7 general elections.
Speaking at the press conference, party chairman Dr. Nii Armah Josiah Aryeh, condemned what he described as the ruling NDC's blatant subversion of the electoral process by using cash inducements to compromise voters and electoral officials.
Dr. Aryeh faulted the process by which the Electoral Commission (EC) collated its results in the famous 'Strong Room' of the Commission. He believes the system is susceptible to manipulation. "Some people took advantage of the process to wreak 419 on us," he stated.
According to an enraged NDP chairman, the clear pilfering of votes from the NDP was unacceptable. He cited several instances where the NDP's parliamentary candidates had their votes slashed considerably in the EC's records.
He laid the blame squarely on the EC, whose modus operandi been questioned by a variety of political actors in recent times.
Almost all the contesting parties in the December 7 and general elections had complained about their votes being diverted to boost the figures of the NDC in the 26,000 polling stations where elections were conducted nationwide.
Dr. Aryeh recounted how in certain constituencies, votes for NDP parliamentary candidates were fraudulently slashed by as much as 70 percent by the EC.
"The Electoral Commission should listen to these countless complaints," Dr. Aryeh implored at the press conference.
The biggest opposition party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has tabled the same complaint, saying that the election won by incumbent President John Dramani Mahama was fraudulent because votes duly recorded for NPP candidate Nana Akufo-Addo were clandestinely converted to the tally of the NDC's John Mahama.
The NPP has announced its intention to drag the EC to the Supreme Court over "incontrovertible" evidence of election rigging within the Commission.
Meanwhile, this is the second time the NDP has had cause to complain about mistreatment by the EC. Months before the election, the EC disqualified the NDP flagbearer Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings from the presidential race, citing a failure to secure the requisite number of signatures on her nomination form.
Therefore, the NDP only had parliamentary candidates contesting in the 2012 races, but none of these candidates won seats.
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