New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Amenfi East
Constituency of the Western Region is bubbling with suspicion over the sudden
change of venue to be used as collation center for the constituency in the
Wednesday general election.The party is of suspicion that a scheme had
been hatched by some members of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and
officials of the Electoral Commission (EC) to rig the elections following the
sudden change of collation center to a venue they deem as “partisan
grounds”.
Addressing a press conference in Wassa Akropong on Wednesday,
the NPP Constituency Secretary, Isaac Kwasi Ennim, explained that at an Inter
Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting held on June 17, 2016, it was
unanimously agreed that the Amenfiman Senior High School should be used as the
constituency collation center for the upcoming election.
He said all
parties at the said IPAC meeting deemed the Amenfiman Senior High School as a
neutral ground hence, the choice to use it as the collation
center.
However, at a recent IPAC meeting held on November 24, 2016, he
said the District Electoral Officer, Miss Juliana Asante, announced to the
surprise of the meeting that the venue had been changed to the Assembly Hall of
the Wassa East District Assembly.
According to him, several protests
about the new venue by IPAC members proved futile as the District Electoral
Officer was adamant on the matter.
Mr. Ennim noted that the main reason
the NPP was opposed to the use of the Assembly Hall for collating results was
that, the same venue was used in 2012 and because it has only one entrance, it
was used “tactfully” by the NDC to prevent some NPP members from entering to
challenge inflated figures.
“When we realized that some of the figures
had been inflated and decided to go to the collation center to challenge the
results, some NDC thugs stood near the entrance and fired gunshots to scare us
away. In the process, some of our supporters including one Appiah and Kwame
Nkrumah sustained various degrees of injury”, he said.
Besides, he said,
few days before the district electoral officer announced the shift of venue, the
NPP picked intelligence that the EC officer had held a secret meeting with the
NDC candidate who is the incumbent Member of Parliament (MP) for the area and
the District Chief Executive who is the campaign manager for the MP.
He
said the NPP would therefore resist all attempt to change the venue, adding that
they would not sit unconcerned and allow the NDC to rig the election again as
they allegedly did in 2012.
The NPP, he said, has therefore “petitioned
the Western Regional Director of the Commission, the District Police Commander,
the Omanhene of the Wassa Amenfi Traditional Council and the District Electoral
Officer” on the matter.
He said the party would announce its next line of
action if the decision is not reversed. |
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