A Deputy Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC) Bossman Asare, has debunked claims by former President John Dramani Mahama that the military influenced the declaration of the 2020 presidential elections.
Former President Mahama alleged on Ho based Global FM during his recent “Thank You” tour of the Volta Region that the military influenced the EC to declare the NPP winners in the 2020 elections
“But for a lot of scheming that took place, the NDC would have won the election. I do believe that we did win, but a lot of things went untoward and so even though power did not come into our hands, it does not mean we do not have the prospects of winning,” he alleged
“We won the majority in Parliament, but you saw what happened on the day. Many of the polling centres injected soldiers and forced the electoral officers to pronounce results that were not real,” the former president further alleged.
However, addressing the media in Accra yesterday, the EC denied the claim by the former president, describing it as false.
“Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, the former President has alleged that the Military influenced the declaration and announcement of the elections results. This is also false. It never happened. Nowhere did the Military influence the declaration and announcement of results. It is not true. The 2020 processes were widely participatory. The media, local and international observers all participated in the elections,” Dr Bossman Asare said.
He pointed out that the results declared and announced at all the polling stations and collation centers were a true reflection of the will of the people.
“The Media and Observers also picked their data right from the ground directly from the 38,622 polling stations and the collation centers and the results were no different from what the EC declared. To buttress the fact that the results were a reflection of the will of the people, it is important to indicate that all the major networks-Peace FM, UTV, Adom FM/TV, Joy News/FM, Kessben, Sky, GBC, Atinka Media collated their own results and it was the same as what the EC declared. These networks called the election for the President before the EC declared. The parallel voter tabulation employed by CODEO also confirmed the results declared by the EC. We call on the good people of Ghana to disregard this allegation of the military influencing the declaration and announcement of results as it is false and untrue,” the EC Deputy Chairman said.
In the interest of Ghana’s democracy, the EC called on the Former President to provide evidence “of where the influence by the Military occurred”.
“We have also noted that the Former President has called the 2020 elections the worst elections. We refute his scoring. The good people of Ghana who experienced our processes are the best judges. Their testimonies on social media demonstrated that Ghanaians were highly satisfied. Additionally, the 2020 elections have been hailed locally and globally as highly transparent, fair, credible, and inclusive,” the EC noted
According to the EC, the world over, scientific methods are used to measure the success or otherwise of elections adding that International and Local Observers who used scientific, internationally-acceptable methods to measure the quality of elections have confirmed that the elections were transparent, credible and highly successful.
“It is not a wonder that the internationally recognized EU International Observer Mission which has a track record of elections observation scored the 2020 elections 95%,” Dr Bossman added.