Mahama’s Utterances Can Jeopardize State Institutions
— George Ackom
A Lecturer with the Ghana Communications Technical University (GCTU) George Ackom has stated that former President John Mahama’s expressions can go a long way to harm state institutions, especially the Electoral Commission (EC).
According to him, Ghana’s democracy as a fundamental element is based on its credible institutions saying using frightening words to describe state institutions do not only cause fear and panic but jeopardy.
Mr Mahama had alleged when he addressed the Divisional Chief of Prestea Himan, Nana Nteboah Prah, recently, as part of his Thank You tour of the Western Region that “More than one million extra ballot papers were printed, which the EC claimed happened by mistake but on the day of the elections, some of the more than one million extra ballot papers had already been secretly thumb-printed in favour of the NPP.”
The Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in last year’s elections added “And, so, all these things dented the credibility of the polls and caused an embarrassment”,
But speaking on Wontumi Radio Morning Show with Oheneba Nana Asiedu on Tuesday, 26/10/2021, George Ackom urged Mr. Mahama to refrain from such statements to dint the image of the EC.
He urged party members to avail themselves for the next general elections to vote massively for the NPP to gag Mr. Mahama from similar fault-finding.
“If we had voted with a huge margin of 2 million votes for President Akufo-Addo, Mahama wouldn’t have the guts to rant around. President Akufo-Addo has done well so let’s vote massively next time for the NPP government,” he reiterated.
Background
The Electoral Commission (EC) has urged the Ghana Police Service to investigate claims by former president John Mahama that there was over voting in the 2020 general elections.
Addressing the press in Accra on Monday, Deputy Chairman of the EC in charge of Corporate Affairs, Dr. Eric Bossman Asare, disputed the claim and appealed to the police to immediately investigate it.
“The former president has said that the EC thumb printed one million ballot papers in favour of the President of the Republic [Nana Akufo-Addo]. This is untrue… This is not a matter that should be ignored, and we call on the Ghana Police Service to investigate it,” he stated.
Dr. Bossman said the alleged comment of John Mahama undermines the credibility of elections in the country, hence the need for the claim to be looked into.
He further challenged John Mahama to provide evidence to back his claim.
“This is a great matter that undermines the credibility of the electoral process and should not be ignored. We call on him to provide evidence to support this claim,” he added.
According to Dr. Bossman, it is impossible that such a thing would occur during the recently held elections as the process is very transparent to the extent that all stakeholders are aware of everything that happens every step of the way.
He explained that empty ballot boxes were displayed for all to see, and the ballot papers were equipped with security features that do not allow for foreign papers to be sneaked into the box.
He added that there was no record of over voting, across the country, except in one constituency where one extra ballot was detected.
The transparency of our process makes it totally impossible for this to happen. The ballots cast are cross-checked against the list of number of voters who were verified and issued with ballot papers. Nationwide, we had no issue of over voting at all the 38,620 polling stations except in Savelugu in the parliamentary election where there was one over voting,” Dr. Bossman stated.
“The police should investigate this as a matter of urgency due to its potential to derail and undermine our democracy and lead to a lack of confidence in our system and processes,” Dr. Bossman added.