- NPP faults NDC’s candidate
- Polls record 34 isolated incidents
Ghana’s National Democratic Congress’ (NDC) presidential candidate Mr. John Dramani Mahama on Tuesday expressed appreciation to the country’s electorate “for voting for change”.
Voters across the country cast their votes in the presidential and parliamentary elections on Monday.
Mahama, in another post, claimed that the party has won the majority of parliamentary seats in the elections.
He claimed that the NDC won the majority of seats in Parliament and thanked Ghanaians for voting for change.
“Thank you for voting for change and giving the NDC a working majority in the next Parliament. Thank you Ghana,” he tweeted.
His party had earlier expressed the belief that it had won 141 parliamentary seats out of the 275 constituencies in Monday’s polls.
The party’s General Secretary, Mr. Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, said at a news conference on Monday that its tally showed that Mahama was also on course to win the presidential race.
But, the New Patriotic Party’s General Secretary, Mr. John Boadu discredited the claim by the NDC.
According to him, the NPP won 137 seats out of the 275 parliamentary seats.
Boadu said: “But although we are in majority which is not very big, our presidential candidate, because of the good work he has done, has been able to gather more voters than most of our parliamentary candidates. Once again…, we are making the point that, whereas we do not wish to declare that we have won the presidential race, we can confidently say that Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has secured a clear incontestable margin ahead of his closest challenger, John Mahama.”
But, as at the time of going to the press, Akufo-Addo was leading with 5,826,549 votes (51.9%) of the votes collated against Mahama’s 5,220,563 votes (46.5%).
Also against its earlier timeline, the country’s Electoral Commission postponed the declaration of the presidential and parliamentary election results until further notice.
According to a statement issued by the commission, the decision was to ensure accurate collation of the election results across the country.
“The Electoral Commission informs the public that to ensure the collation of results at the Constituency and Regional Collation Centres across the country is accurate, the EC will extend its intended timeline for declaring 2020 Presidential election results,” the statement reads in part.
More than 24 hours after voting was closed, collation was still ongoing in some constituencies with some results yet to be confirmed as at yesterday evening.
The electoral commission said results of Monday’s presidential election will be released “as soon as they are received”.
The commission said collation of results is currently ongoing in the country and urged Ghanaians and lovers of the country’s democracy to remain calm and patient.
In a statement titled, ‘Collation Of Election Results Proceeding Smoothly Across The Country’, also warned party representatives and supporters against declaring any results.
The Joint Operation Centre of the National Election Security Taskforce (NESTF) recorded 34 incidents nationwide at the close of polls Monday.
The incidents ranged from a civilian sighted driving a police vehicle in the Bono Region, a shooting incident in the Central Region to electoral officials tampering with ballot papers.
Director of the Public Affairs Directorate of the Ghana Police Service, Supt Sheilla Kessie Abayie-Buckman, in Accra yesterday, said in spite of the pockets of incidents, the elections had been largely peaceful, with few reports of incidents of crime or interferences across the country.
In all, 17,027,641 people were certified to take part in yesterday’s polls in 38,622 polling stations in the 275 constituencies across the country.
The director said due to measures put in place and deployment of security agencies, the NESTF had projected zero incidents. However, it commended the public for their cooperation with pre-election security measures that were put in place and which were well executed on Election Day.
