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Ghanaian Politics

Transfer of votes: We will abide by the EC directive not to send agents to centers – NPP

By : cd on 04 Jun 2024, 06:00     |     Source: christian ahorgah

Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia

According to the New Patriotic Party (NPP), it will not send out agents to keep an eye on the current vote transfer process.

This choice complies with the mandate from the Electoral Commission (EC) to its district offices, which said that party agents should not be allowed into exercise centers due to reports of violence at some locations.

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) is adamant about sending operatives to oversee the procedure in spite of this.

NPP Director of Elections Evans Nimako said in a Citi News interview that the EC’s intentions might be hampered by the NDC’s position.

“For us as the New Patriotic Party, we will comply with the directives by the EC, except that we insist that what is in the act must be real. It does not lay in the map of the NDC to say that irrespective of what the EC has said, we are still going to keep our agents at these centres. In any case, the presence of the agents will not in any way stop a prospective voter who seeks to transfer his or her vote.”

“The issue in there is that parties upon request may be given copies of the transfer list. And then at the stage of the exhibition, parties may challenge through inclusion or exclusion challenges for people who are supposed to be on the electoral role or otherwise but we are confronted with a situation where until the NDC says yes, nothing must happen and this for me is not the way to go.”

The NDC’s conviction that the NPP is conspiring with the EC to rig the poll, he continued, would not prevent the party from winning.

“NDC will not depart from this argument that NPP is colluding to rig elections. Elections will be conducted on December 7, 2024, and definitely, the majority of the voters, now numbering about 18.7 million, will vote massively for Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia. We won elections in 2016 when Madam Charlotte Osei was EC. We won elections in 2000 and 2004 when Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan was EC and so for us as New Patriotic Party, it doesn’t matter who sits there as the EC boss. We are well represented in all the 38,622 polling stations. And I can assure you that come December 7, the candidate of the New Patriotic Party, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia will win massively.”