A Sunyani High Court will on 29 April resume hearing the case of alleged electoral fraud and improprieties against John Asiedu Nketia NDC MP for Wenchi West. Joe Danquah, NPP Parliamentary candidate for Wenchi West in the 2000 general elections, is praying the court to nullify the result of the election that declared Asiedu Nketia as the winner.

In a petition filed by Nana Obiri-Boahen, counsel for Joe Danquah, Asiedu Nketia, was alleged to have resorted to some clandestine and mischievous moves by way of carting in his vehicle an undisclosed number of ballot boxes from Akianyankrom to Bui Camp “in the full glare of the petitioner.”

According to the petition, Joe Danquah appeared helpless at the time for fear of being brutalised by Nketia’s commandos’, who were allegedly in his vehicle. The petition further alleged that the NDC’s collated results were detected to have included results from four ‘ghost polling stations”, instead of the 141 polling stations in the constituency.

Accordingly, the District Electoral Officer and the Returning Officer, together with the party agents, apart from the NDC agents who were said to have “registered their resentment as they left to jubilate over the votes of 12,030 attributed to them, agreed that the results could not be collated and that the figure collated for the parliamentary election remained unacceptable.

This consensus followed the inability of the Election Officers to furnish all the ballot boxes for identification and matching to unravel the mystery surrounding the four foreign boxes or ghost polling station. “Consequently, no results were declared and indeed no Results Declaration Forms were provided by the District Election Officer and the Returning Officer for signing, since the request for the double check of the collated results could not be made due to their ineptitude,” the petitioner further alleged.

According to the petition, both Officers admitted that Joe Danquah’s agent had raised the issue of an excess of four results on the NDC’s collated list that some of the ballot boxes had been sent to Wenchi. The District Election Officer was also alleged to have admitted that some ballot boxes containing vast votes had been dumped in front of his locked offices at Wenchi at dawn, and till day bread, while collation of results was still in progress at Nsawkaw.

In the accompanying affidavit, Joe Danquah contended that the entire drama surrounding the purported declaration of Asiedu Nketia as winner of the Wenchi West parliamentary election was tainted with fraud, “albeit the entire results so far declared must be declared null and void.”

In response to the petition, Asiedu Nketia, however, denied the allegation of any four extra ballot boxes and contended that the results released in his favour were based on the number of votes he obtained per the ballot boxes from 141 pulling stations “only comprised in the constituency.”

A motion on Notice filed by Obiri Boahen, counsel for petitioner had prayed the court to restrain the Electoral Commission from recognising Asiedu Nketia as MP for Wenchi West. It had also sought relief to restrain the Commission from gazetting him as MP for the area.

An affidavit filed opposition by K. Sarfo Kantanka, Legal Practitioner and Deputy Chairman (Finance and Administration) of the EC, described the motion as being “totally misconceived incompetent.”

He argued further that under the provisions of the Section 18 of the Representation of the People Law, 1992 PNDC 284, a petition of this nature can only be presented within 21 days after publication of the gazette of the results of the elections to which it relates and “that at the time of presenting the petition herein no gazette had been published.”