2020 Presidential Election Wasn’t Close, Nothing Contentious – NPP
The ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) has stated that the 2020 presidential election was not a close race.
According to the NPP, with the huge votes difference between its presidential candidate, President-elect, Nana Akufo-Addo, and flagbearer of the NDC, former President John Mahama, “there was nothing contentious” about the election this year.
General Secretary of the NPP, John Boadu, made this known on Tuesday, December 15, 2020, while addressing the media in Accra.
According to him, for the avoidance of doubt, the two leading presidential candidates posted the following results: – Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, 6,730,413, representing 51.302%. John Dramani Mahama, 6,213,182, representing 47.359%.
He said “Nana Addo Dankwa of the NPP, won the election emphatically with four percentage points difference between him and his closest challenger, John Dramani Mahama of the NDC.”
“The votes difference between the two candidates is 517, 231. The percentage points scored by the candidate of the NPP is one of the highest since 1996. So, the presidential election was not even close and therefore there was nothing contentious about it. In 2008, the late Prof. Mills became president with only 50.2% of valid votes cast. In 2012, John Dramani Mahama was president with 50.7% of valid votes cast. In fact, no NDC presidential candidate since Jerry Rawlings has hit the 51% mark in a presidential election,” he said.
According to Mr Boadu, the 50.2% and the 50.7% that John Mills and John Mahama scored represented 40,586 and 325,863 votes difference between them and Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
So, the nation, he said, was at a loss as to how a vote difference of 517,231 can be deemed contentious.
“There is absolutely no doubt in anybody’s mind, that Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo won the 2020 poll emphatically and without doubt. No amount of whining can change that.”
According to him, Mr Mahama had from the outset declared his intention to reject the result of the election.
“He (Mahama) has impugned the integrity of the EC since the beginning of the year and signaled his unwillingness to accept the results of the poll. So, we all know that he is playing according to a script. And we know that the purpose of his effusions is to court the sympathy of the NDC to put him up again as their candidate in 2024. Well, it is entirely up to him. He said in 2016, that it is elementary politics and an old trick for people who know they are losing an election to seek to impugn the integrity of the EC. (Watch this video). We know that too,” he said.
“But what is strange is the unwillingness of candidate Mahama to go to the appropriate forum to make his case for why in spite of scoring a poor 47.3% of the vote, he should be handed the presidency. His logic beggars belief. The Presidency is not his exclusive right to own. In 2012, we also felt cheated. Our presidential candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, told his supporters that he didn’t want one drop of Ghanaian blood to be shed for him to be president. He said he would take his case to the courts. And he did exactly that. Even when the courts made a pronouncement and he disagreed with the verdict of the court, he accepted it with grace and dignity, and bounced back to win in 2016. (Listen to Akufo-Addo in 2012 and what Mahama told us in 2012). We therefore urge Mahama to do the right thing by going to court,” according to him.
Mr Boadu recounted that on Monday, December 14, 2020, the EC published the number of parliamentary seats held by the NPP and the NDC and an independent candidate.
Currently, he said, the NPP has 137 seats and NDC has 136 and an independent candidate has one seat.
“There is one seat, the Sene-West seat which is yet to be declared, and we are confident it would go our way,” he noted.
By Melvin Tarlue