3 Officials Arrested
February 18, 2013
Salamatu Usman arrested by the Police
By Charles Takyi-Boadu
It appears Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan and the Electoral Commission (EC) are desperate, in a quest to gather ‘further and better particulars’ to defend the commission at the Supreme Court over the petition filed by the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) challenging the outcome of the 2012 general elections.
The EC has dispatched its officials to the regions after collecting evidence from the petitioners, the three New Patriotic Party (NPP) leaders including the party’s December 2012 presidential candidate Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, to get all unsigned documents authenticated in view of the court dispute over the December polls.
Other petitioners challenging the commission’s declaration of John Dramani Mahama as President are Nana Addo’s running mate, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia and the party chairman, Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey.
But some of the secret agenda have leaked into the public domain, as some of the officials who participated in the elections have declined to sign.
There were a number of reports over the weekend of attempts by officials of the EC to get some Presiding Officers, especially in the Northern Region, to now sign ‘pink sheets’ used during the disputed elections, two months after the elections.
One such incident which got to the attention of DAILY GUIDE happened in Walewale where the Presiding Officer, a certain Abdul Basit Musah, was approached by the Returning Officer for the EC, one Richard Ayamba, to append his signature to the document.
Interestingly, the issue of unsigned pink sheets is a major part of the irregularities the NPP has complained of, and is seeking to prove that they affected the conduct and outcome of the elections and for which the Supreme Court is being asked to overturn the declaration of President John Dramani Mahama as winner of the presidential elections conducted by the EC.
Abdul Basit, who manned the ‘Cotton Office’ polling station in Walewale, confirmed the incident to DAILY GUIDE when confronted with the information upon a tip-off that he was involved in some underhand dealings with some EC officials.
On the contrary, he narrated that he was in school last week Thursday when a visibly desperate official of the Electoral Commission, Richard Ayamba, came to him and requested that he sign an unsigned pink sheet from his polling station.
He indicated that the request by the EC official baffled him since according to him, the same man had crosschecked everything on the sheet when he submitted it on December 8 2012, after collating the figures and gave the green light for the ‘statement of polls’ and declaration of results from the polling station to be included in the results for the Walewale constituency.
Complicity
However, he declined the request on the basis that copies of the unsigned sheet had already been given to representatives of the various political parties who were present and for which reason signing the sheet could make him complicit in an attempt to cover up wrongdoing in view of the Supreme Court case.
Upon refusal, Basit claimed Mr Ayamba, the EC official, became furious and asked him whether he wanted to put them and the Electoral Commission in trouble.
Basit said he set conditions for the officer to fulfill if he indeed wanted him to append his signature to the document.
He asked the EC official to assemble all polling agents present at the polling station on the election day or at least gather representatives of the parties within the constituency before he would sign, a condition he said the official could not meet.
Apart from that, he also demanded that the EC official should retrieve all the pink sheets given to the political parties for him to sign all of them, a condition he could also not meet since according to him, the EC official said that would waste time.
This was said to have infuriated Mr Ayamba who then decided to leave. But before leaving, he allegedly told Basit that his pink sheet was the only one which was left to be signed and that six other presiding officers in the East Mamprusi district, which had the Walewale and Yagaba Kubori constituencies, had all signed theirs and these were subsequently dispatched to the EC headquarters in Accra.
Justification
The Returning Officer, Richard Ayamba, indeed confirmed approaching Abdul Basit with the said pink sheet though he saw nothing wrong with his actions.
“There is nothing fishy about it,” he told DAILY GUIDE, insisting that the forms were brought to the Regional Head Office of the EC in Tamale for him to get those who did not sign the pick sheets to append their signatures to them.
Asked why he was taking the pink sheets around for them to be signed two months after the elections, Mr Ayamba responded: “It didn’t come from me as an individual because we had handed over all the statement of polls to our officers. So it was just because I was the Returning Officer that it was brought for me from the region. I didn’t go to manufacture the pink sheets.”
But Northern Regional Director for the EC, Sylvester Kanyi did not tell whether or not he had indeed instructed Returning Officers in the region to go round and get Presiding Officers who did not sign their pink sheets to do so, when DAILY GUIDE contacted him.
He claimed to have only heard about the development on radio while in Kumasi and therefore declined to make further comments until he had been fully briefed on the matter.