The defeated Convention People’s Party Member of Parliament for Ellembele in the Western Region is challenging the authenticity of the December 7 polls in his constituency. Mr. Freddy Blay, whose fall astonished many, has made a surprised u-turn, petitioning the Electoral Commission to recount all the votes in the constituency, after conceding defeat shortly after the result was declared. Mr Blay lost to Emmanuel Armah Buah of the National Democratic Congress. They respectively polled 12,428 representing 41.83 % and 14,077 representing 47.38 % of the valid votes cast. The First Deputy Speaker of Parliament said he changed his mind after realising that there were some irregularities which cast doubts over the result of the election; he is praying for a recount to put issues at rest. “I have asked for a recount of the entire ballot cast and re-examination of many of the so-called rejected ballots,” he told Joy News. “On the average in the country, the rejected ballots would be about 3% at most. In our particular case, it is about 16 -17.” He considered as “strange” if a constituency could register as high as 5000 rejected votes and most of them, he claimed, were cast in his favour. He further stated that in some cases ballots papers given to the electorate were not signed by some presiding officers; those papers were rejected by the NDC candidate. “But that was not the fault of anybody but the electoral officers themselves.” Story by Isaac Essel