The outcome of the December, 2012 Presidential Election has taught me a lot of lessons. One is that man is a creature who exhibits his beastly nature when he/she arrogates to him/herself powers, he/she does not possess.
But we equally share in the blame because we failed ourselves and the nation most when we went to sleep with both eyes closed whilst treachery was at its worst.
The fraud was programmed: That was well planned and hatched at the highest level by agents of destabilization long before the elections.
The first time I heard about it was when the Nefarious Destructive Cancer recruited some Ghanaians to help cheat during the election. At the arrowhead of this conspiracy was now Deputy Minister of Education, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa and the NDC Organizing Secretary, Yaw Boateng Gyan. The person they attempted to recruit reported to me all that took place during the process of recruitment and what transpired thereafter.
I alerted top party men about the nefarious activities of the NDC concerning the registration exercise but was let down by party apparatchiks who felt I was crying wolf where there was none. Poor me, what could I do but to sheathe my dagger.
I know Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa and Yaw Boateng Gyan will deny the existence of any such plot. Like it happened in Elijah’s time, I hereby throw an open challenge to both of them to do the proper thing by swearing on the Holy Bible before The Living God who shall judge both the living and the dead that they did not engage any such diabolical plan against the country. I will also do the same thing. This must be done in the open for Ghanaians to know who is telling the truth. They must accept this open challenge if they are indeed true sons of their fathers and have two balls dangling between their legs. Elijah’s challenge was quickly accepted by the prophets of Ball
Prevention of Teachers from participating in the Registration Exercise: That was the first indication that something was seriously wrong with our electoral process. It was this fatwa that culminated in the staging of a constitutional coup against the citizens of the Republic of Ghana.
Some criminally minded persons at the Headquarters of the Ghana Education Service and the Ministry of Education, with the tacit approval of a few officials of the Electoral Commission gave an open directive that no teacher would be engaged by the EC for both the Registration and Voting Exercise. This was the beginning of the plot.
But instead of the NPP to rally other political parties to contest that issue, the party went to sleep. I shouted myself to the highest heavens to protest against such a move. But poor me, who am I to engage such powerful and mighty people in the land of my birth? I am nothing but an infinitesimal part of creation. Nobody listened to the lone voice crying in the wilderness. Nobody even spared a thought for the point I was making. The long and short of it all was that nobody cared whether I existed or not. That cut short my dream.
Their game plan was simple. Dispense with the services of well-trained teachers so that if mistakes were discovered, they could be classified as “administrative errors” on the part of temporary and in-experienced staff of the Electoral Commission. This is exactly the situation we now find ourselves.
I was shocked when the Electoral Commission, in its response to allegations of over-voting and other electoral malpractices alluded to the fact that the mistakes or failure to fill some portions of the pink sheets and to sign them was due to the fact that their temporary staffs were ill-trained. If you hire somebody to work for you and the person does not work to specifications, does that exonerate you from blame?
Why do you sack were trained staff that have worked assiduously with you over the years and replace them with ill-trained ones? Why were the services of teachers dispensed with in the first place? It was to make it possible for the hidden agenda of the Nefarious Destructive Cancer to see the light of the day! It would have been nearly impossible for a constitutional coup of such gargantuan scale to be committed against mother Ghana if the services of teachers had not been dispensed with.
Since the 4th Republic was ushered in, can the EC or the Respondents point out instances of using blank pink/blue sheets without signatures to declare the results of either Presidential or Parliamentary Elections?
Another question on the lips of everybody is this:” Why should such unpardonable errors be very rampant in the strongholds of one particular party or candidate? If such ‘administrative’ or ‘clerical’ errors had occurred in a few polling stations, their excuses could be accepted. But in a situation where the same errors occur at different polling stations scattered all over the country they could not just be washed away with the mere wave of the hand. They are unpardonable.
If in an examination, candidates scattered at different centres all over the country give the same wrong answers to a particular question, the Examiners/Markers will surely raise concern. It could mean only one thing - that the conduct or the custody of the question papers had been compromised. Simple! Why should some Presiding Officers append their signatures on the pink sheets whilst others did not? Were they done deliberately?
Another well-calculated attempt to cheat: Yes, the NDC and the EC were strange bed fellows which staged a constitutional coup against Mother Ghana. Indeed the devil re-incarnate was at work. As already stated, the Nefarious Destructive Cancer had right from onset declared the December 2012 Presidential Election as a “Must Win at all cost”. Any person who acted as an obstacle would be crushed. And that was why the late President was sacrificed by the party.
The Questions: Why did they leave those blank spaces unfilled? Are they morally right to deliberately leave blank spaces unfilled and attribute them to genuine administrative errors? What do they mean by genuine administrative/clerical errors?
If in Mathematics, you get the answer right but do not show the statements which resulted in the answer will the Examiner give you credit for the omission? I am referring to the written paper which asks for the various steps leading to the answer. If you are borrowing money from the bank and you omit to fill in columns which pertain to your personal details, including your signature, will the bank give you the credit facility?
Posers for Afari Djan: Did Afari Djan not disqualify some potential Presidential aspirants for not filling out their nomination forms in accordance with his own laws? Did Afari Djan also not disqualify a presidential aspirant for not signing his signature on the nomination form? According to the disqualified aspirant, he was asked to sign his signature or put a mark there. He had put a mark as stated on the form but was disqualified by Afari Djan.
Konadu Agyemang Rawlings was disqualified because her nomination forms were not properly filled. If for improper filling of forms, an aspirant was prevented for contesting the presidential elections, what happens to results coming from arrears whose pink sheet results were not properly filled and authenticated?
You see, the Electoral Commission and its strange bed-fellows (the Nefarious Destructive Cancer) cannot eat their cake and still have it. Afari Djan and his Electoral Commission were the ones who first threw the stone. Others must be given the opportunity to respond by throwing back the same stone at them.
The Law is an Ass. I now come to the argument that NPP Agents were at the polling Stations but did not raise any objection/eyebrow at what the NDC and the EC referred to as the supposedly administrative/clerical errors/mistakes. Are the respondents suggesting that if a crime is committed but people do not raise any eyebrow at the point of commission, it must be made to go unpunished? Are they suggesting that if someone slaps my brother but I did not complain at first, my brother has lost the right to seek redress in the law courts?
Illegal Payments to Wayome: This is a good case to illustrate the point I am making here. An Attorney General, Betty Mould Iddrissu and her ‘partner in crime’ Barton Oduro, then Deputy Attorney General, but now Chairman of the Appointment Committee of Parliament made some gargantuan illegal payments to Alfred Agbesi Wayome from the national coffers. But another Attorney General, Martin Amidu took over the case and went to court to compel the “wayoman’ to refund the money to the state. Is Afari Djan together with President Mahama and the Nefarious Destructive Cancer telling us that Martin Amidu did not have the legal right to go to court to recover the illegal payment made to the “wayoman”?
What happened at the Florensa Polling Station: In most of the Polling Stations all over the country, NPP Polling Agents did not have knowledge of the gargantuan crimes of collusion between the Electoral Commission and the NDC at that time. At Florensa Polling Stations A and B for example, the polling agents of the political parties were driven away from their observatory positions before commencement of voting by the police personnel assigned to the station. They were allowed in after the initial record taking had been filled in by the EC staff. In such a situation how would they detect that some blank spaces had deliberately left unfilled?
The NDC challenged Kufuors’s Election in court: Late President Mills congratulated ex President Kufuor when he was adjudged winner of the December, 2000 Presidential Election. Later the NDC took the case to court to have Kufuors’s victory at the polls annulled. But the heavens did not fall. So, challenging Mahama’s so-called victory in court is not a new thing.
The IEA Debate: The Nefarious Destructive Cancer decided it would not take part in the 2012 Presidential Debates organized for political parties by the Institute of Economic Affairs. The party later made a u-turn and participated in it after the demise of President Atta Mills. The question on the lips of people is this. Should the organizers have prevented the NDC from participating in the debates? A big No! One might say.
The Dzi wo Fie Mantra: This was the centre of the NDC’s Foreign Policy during late President Mills time. Under late President Mills, the Nefarious Destructive Cancer repudiated an agreement the late President himself had appended his signature to when it criticized ECOWAS’s decision to send troops to Cote D’Ivoire during her political impasse. But that policy of isolation under late President Mills has changed to that of rapprochement under “danger boy Mahama riding a bicycle without brakes down a slope” Today, Ghana has sent soldiers to fight Islamic militants in Northern Mali who are fighting to overthrow the Government of the country.
Which is worse – attempts to enforce a truce by sending troops as a last resort to ensure that the legitimately elected Government is given its mandate or sending troops to battle rebel forces who are armed to the teeth and whose sole aim is fighting to bring down an illegitimate government.
Collateralization of our Oil: The Government of the Nefarious Destructive Cancer initially sent out a fact finding team to determine whether or not our oil should be collateralized. The conclusion at the end of the exercise was that our oil should not be collateralized. But the same Government later reversed the decision. Our elders have a saying that “se yen were fi na yekofa a ennye bone.” Translated literally, it means if we forget to do something and later realize our mistake, it is no sin. The point I am making here is this. If NPP Polling Agents bring out their pink sheets and the party hierarchy detects serious anomalies on them, nothing prevents the party from challenging such gargantuan malpractices in court.
Deliberately refusing to sign pink sheets: Was it genuine or deliberate? Will Almighty Afari Djan look Ghanaians eyeball to eyeball and tell them that the so-called administrative/clerical errors were deliberately induced? And if they were not, what effect did it have on the declaration? Did the Court judgment on the creation of the 45 new constituencies have the signatures of the Presiding judge(s)? If it did not, would it have had any legal effect on the creation? Again, what effect will it be on the final judgment of this petition before our Lords Temporal, if it does not have the signatures of members of the panel? Will the contending parties accept the final report of the KPMG team which is conducting a Forensic Audit of the Pink Sheets if the final report does not bear the signatures of the leader of the team which conducted the audit?
Will it breach the laws of this country if a statement is issued in the name of the President but does not bear his signature?
Asamoah Boating’s issue: The Nefarious Destructive Cancer hounded Asamoah Boateng, his wife and others before the law courts because according to the latter, Asamoah Boating’s wife did not have a legal contract with the Ministry of Information before the wife embarked on the renovation of work at the Ministry. Even though the wife did the job and has not yet been paid, she is before the law courts for by-passing the laid down procedure.
Therefore if the Law says the pink sheets must bear the authentic signatures of Presiding Officers the signatures must be there. If they are not there, the figures on them must not be used to collate the final results. While Afari Djan was the Lord and Master of all that he surveyed, he used his obnoxious laws to whip every Ghanaian into submission. The adage then was ‘the fear of Afari Djan was the beginning of wisdom”. Whoever contradicted him was bound to have his ego bruised. If Afari Djan said you were on the team, you were. If his countenance did not like you, no amount of goodwill on your part would make you part of the team. It was the Gospel according to Afari Djan. He made his own law, gave it his own interpretation and administered it the way he liked.
Official Declaration of Results: In the brochure titled “A Guide to Candidate and their Agents” issued by the Electoral Commission of Ghana, page 17 has the following “The results of a Presidential Election are officially declared through a Constitutional Instrument (C.I) signed by the Chairman of the Electoral Commission. Why does the Chairman have to sign the Declaration? What happens if the CI is not signed? And if the Chairman of the EC has to sign the final Declaration sheet before it becomes law, why should the results from Polling Stations which do not have signatures of Presiding Officers be accepted and collated? The law says the pink sheets must be signed. If they are not signed, no matter the number, the votes from those polling stations must be annulled.
Biometric Voter Verification (BVV): The EC’s manual to candidates and their agents has this information on page 20. “On Election Day, all voters will be verified/identified by their biometric details in the Voter’s Register. Voter’s fingerprints will be scanned on a voter verification machine and compared with their details in the Voters’ Register. The verification of voters is to ensure that only persons on the voters roll in each polling station are allowed to cast their ballots on Election Day”.
That was the law. Afari Djan said it loud and clear that nobody would be allowed to vote if that person was not verified biometrically. Now, he is singing a new song – that as the Returning Officer of the Presidential Election, he should have been consulted before any Presiding Officer took a decision on whether or not the results from a particular polling station ought to be annulled or not. How could he speak from both sides of the mouth at the same time? The man is full of mischief.
What happened to those who could not be verified by the biometric machine and were turned away from the polling stations? People are not saying anything about those people but they were quite a significant number of them Have we also not disenfranchised them, if we are to go by Afari Djan and Tsatsu Tsikata’s logic? But that was what Afari Djan’s law said. Does Afari Djan now want to tell Ghanaians that the Presiding Officers in those Polling Stations should have contacted him for directions before turning back those people from the voting centres?
Since when did Tsatsu Tsikata, Qurshie Idun, Tony Luther and Afari Djan realize the Constitution grants to Ghanaians the right to vote and that no Ghanaian should be prevented from exercising that franchise. If we were to go by that logic, Afari Djan should then explain why Ghanaians resident in all countries are not allowed to exercise that franchise? Why did the EC spend money to register some special category of such people? The rest are expected to come down to Ghana to register and vote in elections. The law does not allow any Ghanaian who has not registered to exercise that franchise. In the same vein, the law says every Registered Ghanaian voter has to go through a biometric verification exercise before being allowed to exercise that right. If people do not go through the verification exercise, the votes of those people are annulled. Simple! The law is very straight on that.
What is Bad is Bad: What is bad will always remain bad. It cannot be white-washed. What the NDC refuses to acknowledge is the fact that the NPP Agents signed those pink sheet to confirm what actually transpired at those polling stations. The evidence is there on those pink sheets. They tend to have what is referred to as selective amnesia. The fact that a crime is not detected immediately it happens does not mean that anytime it is detected the offenders must not be prosecuted. Recently, a big scandal erupted at the Department of National Lotteries. Is the NDC telling Ghanaians that we should allow perpetrators of such gargantuan crime off the hook because officials of the Department chose to turn a blind eye on it when it first reared its ugly face? What about the scandal that shook the foundation of the banking industry recently/ Per the thinking of the NDC, they would like those scoundrels to be let off the hook because their supervisors chose to turn a blind eye on it.
The Father of all scandals: Recently, Mr Solomon Adelaquaye, Chief Executive Officer of Sohin Security Company, which until June 4, 2013 provided security services at the Kotoka International Airport was given “safe passage” to smuggle smuggle narcortics out of Ghana to the United States. He was busted by the US Drugs Administration. If we were to go by the illogical conclusion of Afari Djan, Quarshie Idun, Tony Luther, Tsatsu Tsikata and their paymasters, Solomon Adelaquaye, the Ghanaian trafficker must not be prosecuted by the United States because its Ghanaian counterpart saw nothing wrong in what the arrested baron did. This is how low Ghana’s image has sunk under President John Mahama.
In conclusion, let me re-iterate one point. Afari Djan, Capo of Ghana’s Electoral Commission has one thing in common with the notorious Al-Capone, the never to-be-forgotten terrorist, gangster and conman of the United States. They are both terrorist/gangsters and fraudsters. Afari Djan has presided over a Commission which hatched and executed an electoral fraud on such a gargantuan scale against the people of Ghana. The Electoral fraud in Nigeria which ushered in the late Yar Aduah’s administration pales to insignificance when compared with what happened during the December, 2012 Election in Ghana.
What Afari Djan did is criminal; it is unpardonable and a crime against God and humanity. When God visits His anger on the oppressors of the land who happen to be beneficiaries of the Constitutional Coup against the people of Ghana, who will rescue them? Nobody! Not even the mountains nor the Sea can save them from the wrath of the Living God and the masses that they have oppressed for long.
Judging by the untold hardship that Afari Djan, the modern day Al-Capone has inflicted on Ghanaians, one would not be wrong to conclude that Afari Djan is an evil genius who must not be let loose in a decent society. He played a dangerous and selfish game and lost it. He has taken the country down the route of Golgotha. Afari Djan has jammed and must be chained at all cost.
This is the people’s verdict.
Daniel Danquah Damptey ([email protected]) 0243715297.