The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has called for a comprehensive recount of ballot papers in the Ejura Sekyeredumase Constituency in the Ashanti region of Ghana, following allegations of electoral malpractice and irregularities. Sulamana Issifu, a member of the NPP’s legal team, expressed serious concerns over the integrity of the election results, citing what he described as significant errors made by the Electoral Commission (EC). These errors, according to Issifu, included manipulated ballot papers and transpositional errors where certain polling stations were reported to have given the National Democratic Congress (NDC) zero votes. The NPP has formally petitioned the EC to conduct a recount at all 177 polling stations in the constituency, demanding that until these discrepancies are addressed, they will not accept the provisional results released by the commission.
Issifu further accused the EC of failing to adhere to proper procedures during the election process, pointing out that some of the manipulated pink sheets used in the voting process had undermined the credibility of the results. He noted that the errors admitted to by the EC were critical to the fairness of the elections, as they cast doubts on the authenticity of the ballot papers and the overall integrity of the vote count. Issifu also alleged incidents of violence and ballot box snatching in areas considered strongholds of the NPP. He claimed that the military had to intervene in some locations to restore order and prevent further disruption. These incidents, he argued, underscored a broader pattern of electoral misconduct that needed to be addressed through a full recount of the votes.
Despite the NPP’s calls for a recount, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has rejected these demands, insisting that recounts can only be conducted at the polling station level and not at the collation center. Stanley Tweneboah Kodua Gyamfi, a member of the NDC’s legal team, argued that the laws governing elections in Ghana did not support the NPP’s call for a recount at the collation level. He maintained that the electoral process had been conducted transparently and that the results should be accepted as they were. The controversy over the recount has heightened tensions in the constituency, with both parties accusing each other of electoral malpractice and attempting to influence the final outcome of the election. As the deadline for finalizing results approaches, the situation in Ejura Sekyeredumase remains a focal point of scrutiny for the Ghanaian public and international observers.
