The National Communications Officer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has said the 2020 elections were not peaceful, free and fair as many have said.

Although the Electoral Commission chair, Jean Mensa has described the just-ended December 7, election as free and fair, Sammy Gyamfi disagrees.

“When we were going into the elections as key stakeholders we thought it was going to be peaceful, free and fair but unfortunately that was not the case.”

Probing further the aftermath of election 2020 on Newsfile Saturday, he observed that some security personnel deployed to ensure that the elections were peaceful did otherwise.

“We saw military men interfering with the collation of results, seeking to swap pink sheets, seeking to change results,” he said. 

“And when people protested, they shot some of them and killed them,” he added.

The communications officer noted that perpetrators in the just-ended elections will be encouraged to engage in impunity as exhibited in the elections if they go unpunished.

“When you fail to punish wrongdoers, you embolden wrongdoers to engage in wrongdoing with breeding impunity, that is what we saw between the 7th and the 10th of December when we went for this year’s elections.”

He said, “In Techiman, we had a protest after the EC did the charade they described as collation. 

"We thought what they had done did not constitute collation so we said, do the proper thing, let’s collate the result and declare the winner, we started protesting, nobody fired a gun, and nobody assaulted anybody.”

“The next thing we saw was the military shooting at the people and killing three in the process.”

Reports from the CID suggested that there were shooting from the people but Sammy Gyamfi said that account is untrue.

“At least I have seen the video footage of what happened in Techiman South, nobody in the crowd was holding a gun and nobody was firing a gun.

"It was rather the police and the military officers who were firing, the video is available,” he countered. 

He added, “In Ablekuman central, no NDC supporter was holding a gun, nobody fired a gun, rather it was these National Security operatives who came to the centre, fired warning shots, asked people to leave and when the people refused, they started firing directly at people.”

He recalled there was a similar incidence in Awutu Senya East, “wherein the voter registration exercise, Hawa Koomson has ablated to be firing gunshots at a registration centre without our law enforcement agencies doing anything about that.”

Mr Gyamfi stressed, “in all these cases the NDC has been at the receiving end, we have been the victims.”

So far, a total of six persons; two in Techiman, two in Odododiodo, one in Ablekuman and another person in Sablogu lost their lives during the elections with many others left injured. 

“For me, what has happened is unacceptable, it is a dent on our democratic gains as a country,” the NDC Communications Officer said.

“It will continue to remain an indelible blot on the reputation of President Nana Akufo-Addo and the IGP,” he concluded.