The National Democratic Congress has doubted the credibility of President J. A. Kufuor to oversee a successful handing over of power as was done to him in 2001. Dr. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, a leading member of the NDC, who raised the doubt with respect to the violent confrontations in some polling stations especially in the Ashanti Region, the stronghold of the ruling party, said what happened “has given us a great deal of concern”. At a press conference in Accra on Sunday, he said the runoff was marred by heavily armed security personnel particularly in the NDC’s stronghold, which he claimed scared a number of their voters away from exercising their franchise. “The election process has been so militarized and the role of armed people, whether legitimate armed people or machomen. People have been trained and put into various uniforms and asked to perform services that are not part of the legitimate services of our uniformed armed forces or police service.” He said a litany of abuses of electoral process and irregularities could lead to the rejection of results in certain polling stations. “As far as the National Democratic Congress is concerned, the election that has taken place today at many polling stations cannot be considered as having been transparent, free and fair.” Kobby Acheampong, a member of Prof. Atta Mills’ communications team, alleged that proxy votes that were not coming from the EC were distributed to people. He said in the Ashanti region where he monitored the election, the NDC agents were harassed and intimidated when they tried to challenge the authenticity of the proxy votes. He said many of the incidents that took place on Sunday were not different from the special voting where non-qualified people were allowed to vote. Mr. Acheampong said even though Ghanaians by nature are touted to be peaceful people, “You can push people up to a certain point and they will explode. It will get to a point where the people will take the law into their own hands.” Meanwhile a press statement issued by the NDC noted that it is “disappointed in the abysmal manner, shape and form in which the ruling New Patriotic Party has conducted this index presidential runoff…the worst has happened and we are saying enough is enough…there are palpable instances of multiple voting, intimidation, and physical assault.” The statement signed by the party’s Deputy General Secretary, Elvis Afriyie-Ankrah, listed names of NDC leaders and functionaries who allegedly suffered various forms of injustice in the runoff, mostly in the Ashanti Region. It therefore called on independent observers, the diplomatic corps, civil society and other stake-holders “to stand up and be counted”. Story by Isaac Essel