We have 140 seats – NDC claims, as they accuse NPP of employing tricks to rig

Even before the Electoral Commission (EC) announces the final results of the December 7 polls, the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has claimed that they have won 140 seats out of the total of 275 seats in parliament.

This is yet to be verified as EC has not released all provisional results from the constituencies.

The NDC currently has 106 seats and if the claims of the NDC is the case they would have increased their seats by 32%, with a majority in parliament.

Addressing a press conference on Tuesday, December 8, a day after the elections, the Director of Elections for the NDC Elvis Afriyie-Ankrah said it was not true that the NPP had more seats.

For example, he said the NDC won 14 out of 15 seats in Upper East Region and nine in the Northern Region.

According to him, the NDC won two in North East, six in the Bono Region, two in Ahafo Region, nine in Bono, eight in Upper West, nine in Western, seven in Western North, 20 in Greater Accra, 13 in Central Region, eight in Oti Region, 17 in Volta Region, four in Savanna Region, eight in the Ashanti Region and four in Eastern Region.

He wondered how the NPP could claim that they were winning contrary to the NDC’s analysis.

He was of the view that “except in a few cases, wherever a parliamentary candidate wins, the presidential candidate also wins and more often than not, the presidential candidate gets more votes than the parliamentary candidate, so, it is absurd for anybody, in the face of these facts, to say that in spite of the fact that we are leading in the parliamentary, we have won regions, constituencies that we’ve never won before, won the key swing regions: Great Accra, Central, the western enclave, we have won them and turned them around, seat that we’ve never won before as we said earlier, flipped around almost 38 seats, so, how can anybody that in the face of this, they are leading?”

The NDC insisted that “the trajectory is clear; indeed, based on the figures that we have, we’re leading in the Greater Accra Region in the presidential, we’re leading in the western enclave, we’re leading in the Bono enclave and we’re confident that by the time we compile the rest of the [results for the] presidential candidate, we’ll be in pole position to be the one that will become the President, John Mahama will be the President of the Republic”.

The opposition party alleged that the governing NPP was employing various tricks to outwit election officials.

“If you want a recount, there’s a process that you have to go through. The first recount, you must request for it at the polling station, when that is done, if you are not satisfied, you have to request for the second collation at the collation centre.

“We’ve had situations where there were no recounts at all ab initio and then they go to the collation centre and they insist on recounts and by the time those recounts start, then funny things happen: ballot boxes are swapped, we’ve had situations where, in Sefwi, a ballot box was swapped and so many others so we see that as a strategy, that because they know they are losing, they use the recount and then in the process they do all kinds of things,” he noted.

He, therefore, called on the NDC agents and officials to be vigilant.