I'll not go to court over NDC election malpractice – Kojo Adu Asare
Mr Kojo Adu Asare, who contested the position of Deputy General Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) at last Saturday's congress , and was misrepresented on the ballot paper as Justice Yeboah has decided not to pursue the issue of malpractice in court.
Advertisement
Read also: Adu Asare raises concern over
Barbara Serwaa Asamoah and Peter Boamah Otokonor won the two Deputy General Secretary slots.
Other contestants were David Kwaku Worwui-Brown, Kojo Adu Asare, a former MP for Adentan and former Presidential Staffer, George Lawson, Abdullah Ishaq Farrakhan, Nii Dodoo Dodoo, Kale Cezar, Ephraim Nii Tan Sackey and Evans Amoo.
In a 27-minute radio interview with Kwami Sefa Kayi on Accra based Peace FM Tuesday morning, Mr Adu Asare said he was convinced that the move was deliberately orchestrated to ensure that he lost the election.
"It is not a mistake, it is somebody’s deliberate attempt to fix me, it was not a mistake. If it was a mistake on the ballot paper, could it have been a mistake on the declaration paper too, it is unto the person," he said.
"To be honest with you, I can't only believe that it was a coincidence. The only Justice Yeboah that comes to mind is somebody who contested as Deputy Youth organizer at the youth conference and was not in any of this particular category of elections," Mr Adu Asare told Kwami Sefa Kayi.
Read also: Adu Asare raises concern over
Explaining, Mr Adu Asare said all candidates were asked to submit passport pictures with
He said, unfortunately, he was not called to inspect a sample of the ballot paper before it was printed and added that the "Notice of Poll," which was displayed at all party offices across the country had his name and picture correctly displayed so he assumed everything was correct.
How he found out about the anomaly
On the Election Day, Mr Adu Asare said it was the Member of Parliament for Ajumako-Enyan-Essiam, Cassiel Ato Forson, who first alerted him about the anomaly on the ballot paper after the Central Region had started voting. “It did not take more than 10 minutes after voting that he alerted me,” he said
“I rushed there and confirmed for myself and I went to the dais to complain to Alex Segbefia. I wanted the process to be halted after an hour and wanted an announcement to be made that the name was wrong so that people will be aware and at least even though it would not have cured the problem, voters would have been aware.”
He said after several complaints to Kofi Attoh, Bede Ziedeng and Alex Segbefia who were part of the committee for the
“I insisted they halt the process, I nearly went to pick the microphone to halt the process” and even though Kofi Attoh, in particular, acknowledged the fact that it was wrong, he insisted he and his team cannot stop the process.
He said the lights at the voting area was so bad such that, he knew the voters could not even see the picture properly especially as it had also been distorted in the attempt to crop off the red background.
Wayforward
Talking about what he was going to do about the issue, Mr Adu Asare said: “I don’t really want to pursue this, throughout the elections I was not very well, I had a problem with my leg and cut short my campaign. As of Saturday, my legs were swollen, I need to take care of myself
“What I want is about the system and not me. What I want is for the system to take care of some of these bad blood things. For the fear of God, I will let this one go… because I have confidence in Ofosu Ampofo who would not allow such issues to die off.
He said the party would have to look for those who perpetrated the “heinous crime and deal with them.”
“The party has to do things properly, those who did quality control did not do a good job and if they could make such a mistake and cost the office of the deputy general secretary, those who won know their election is denigrated, somebody is in an office who is not legitimately there,” he added.
Some members of the committee that organised the
Writer's email: [email protected]