General News of Monday, 17 December 2012

Source: Joy Online

Akomea, Wereko-Brobby tango over whether NPP should go to court

The Director of Communications of the New Patriotic Party Nana Akomea is baffled at comments by one of the party's founding members, Dr Charles Wereko-Brobby who says the party lost the 2012 elections because it failed to protect the ballot.

Dr Wereko-Brobby in a statement issued in Accra, cast doubts on the party’s chances of reversing the 2012 election verdict at the court.

Whilst he believes there is a substantial case of “official manipulation and massaging of both the voting process and the outcome of election 2012,” he told Joy News’ Jefferson Sackey on Monday the party and its polling agents were “complicit” in what he says is another stolen verdict in the country’s election.

He said if the party had channeled all its energies into protecting the ballot as it is now doing in compiling voting irregularities across the country to go to court, the results declared by the Electoral Commission would have been different.

Rather than going to court, Dr Wereko-Brobby says the party leaders must “let sleeping dogs lie” so that they “prepare to put up a better performance in 2016 and beyond.”

But the Director of Communications of the NPP is questioning the basis for Tarzan's comments.

Nana Akomea in an analogy said merely because a security man failed in his duties to protect a house does not mean that the burglar should be rewarded and praised for his action.

He said given the “extensive irregularity” that characterise the 2012 elections, it would be foolhardy on the part of the NPP to let sleeping dogs lie.

Nana Akomea said the NPP owed it a duty to Ghana and her young democracy to challenge the election results at the courts.

“We have a duty to expose these irregularities so they don’t happen again,” he added.

He dismissed the assertions by Dr Wereko-Brobby that the NPP was complicit in its own election defeat, insisting the incontrovertible evidence of fraud gathered so far necessitated the legal challenge the NPP was about to mount on the results.

He insisted the party will follow the due process of law and will present its case to the Supreme Court within the 21 days stipulated by law to bring an election petition after declaration of election result.