Jean Mensa is rather being untruthful, she sacked us – Mettle-Nunoo

The third witness in the ongoing election petition hearing has accused the Electoral Commission Chairperson Jean Mensa of sacking him from the EC strongroom.

The witness, Robert Joseph Rojo Mettle-Nunoo, who is testifying in support of the petitioner John Dramani Mahama said the EC boss sacked him from the National Collation centre on December 9, last year.

Mr Mettle-Nunoo was responding to questions posed by the Counsel for the Commission Justin Amenuvor about happenings that characterized the December 7 elections.

Mr Amenuvor wanted to know on whose instruction the two representatives of the petitioner (Rojo Mettle-Nunoo and Dr Micheal Kpessa-Whyte) had left the EC strong room.

“I left the strong room when the EC sacked me from the strong room. That was the first time I left the room. The EC sacked me from the strong room. It has never happened before. In previous elections, I stayed there for 72 hours.

“I left the strongroom the second time to seek an audience with the electoral commissioner. It was somewhere between 3:00pm and 4:00pm,” Mr Mettle-Nunoo said agitatedly in an examination that appeared to be a boxing ring for the duo.

Mr Amenuvor, however, insisted that it was rather the witness who was not being truthful with his submission to the court on Monday.

The witness maintained that the EC Chairperson had assured the petitioner’s team of a redress to issues regarding the Ashanti, Northern, Bono East and the Greater Accra region respectively.

“We went to seek audience with her, apart from the regions that I did not sign and she assured us that we should go, she will address it,” he explained.

Mr Mettle-Nunoo also reminded the court of the Afari-Gyan led commission where it gave opportunities for all grievances to be addressed before declaring election results.

“Dr Afari Gyan always gave opportunities for these errors to be rectified,” he added.

Among other things, the witness, in his witness statement said he was misled by EC officials to sign the regional collation sheet for Ashanti region.

The NDC representative explained that he signed the sheet because there was a signature of the agent of Mr. Mahama on it.

Mr Mettle-Nunoo said he later realised that the sheet presented to him to sign was inconsistent with a tally of polling station results in the Ashanti Region.

“It is my express understanding that the entire election processes require very importantly a transparent assembling and collation of results so that no single vote of those who cast valid votes is left out of account and not one invalid vote is included in the votes taken into account.

“It is also my understanding that nothing other than votes cast validly at one of the accredited 38,622 polling stations should be factored into the collation af the 275 constituency collation centres through to the 16 regional centres and on to the strong room. At each stage, evidently corrections could be made in accordance with due process. I informed the EC Chair and she told me she would look into it,” excerpts of the statement said.

But the solution to these concerns was not to be as the EC Chair made a quick turn to declare the results in favour of the NPP presidential candidate Nana Akufo-Addo.

All these concerns, which was not addressed, he said undermined the credibility of the polls and cast grave doubts on the integrity of those assigned responsibilities for a free, fair and transparent election.

It will be recalled that the second witness for the petitioner, Dr Michael Kpessa-Whyte had mentioned that the EC Chairperson deceived them into leaving the strong room on December 9, last year.

In Mr Mettle-Nunoo’s witness statement, he corroborates the claim by Dr Kpessa-Whyte.

“She said very directly that we should go and speak with the petitioner,”  he stated.