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General news for Thursday, November 26, 2020
Source: Peace FM
2020-11-26
Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, NDC Director of Elections
The opposition’s largest National Democratic Congress (NDC) has warned the Electoral Commission (EC) not to rush to declare the results of the upcoming general elections on December 7, 24 hours after the voting ends.
The Election Commission’s Director of Elections Services, Dr. Serebour Quaicoe, has said that plans are in place to ensure there are no undue delays 24 hours after the polls close.
“All things being equal, we hope that before going to bed on December 8, we would have come out with the presidential results,” he said in an interview with Joy News.
He added that like the 2016 election, “we will use the manual transmission” in this year’s election.
“The electoral colleges will send the results to the constituency, the constituency will send its results to the region and the region will send us the results by fax,” he clarified.
But NDC elections director Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, who addressed a press conference in Accra on Wednesday, said any rush to declare the results will produce unrealistic results.
“What is the basis for this statement, what mechanisms, structures and systems have you put in place to ensure that this statement you are making will be able to fulfill without problems? How does it work in practical terms? An election is a process, the results are declared at the voting table. Those results are moved from the polling station to the district collection center, from the district collection center you have now created another layer at the regional level. Then from the regional level to the national level. And especially for the presidential vote, the Electoral Commission itself is supposed to be the head of scrutiny. Through this process, are you saying that you will see all the results for all 275 constituencies before making a statement? Don’t you see the danger here? Is it going to depend only on the 16 regions?
He added: “So you see that they are creating another unrealistic expectation and when the day comes and by that time they can’t know what they will do, they are going to cook numbers, they are going to announce something else at all because they want to meet an unrealistic timeline. 24 hours, who forced them? These are the things that do and cause problems for everyone. No one has pointed a gun at their heads. It is important to have timely results, but it is better to have accurate and truthful results that reflect what the people voted for and we will accept nothing less than that. We need accurate results that reflect what people have voted for and not results generated based on 24-hour pressure. It is completely unacceptable. “
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