A defeated aspirant in the Ketu North Parliamentary primary of the National Democrat Congress (NDC) has expressed concern at a decision of the party to declare his opponent the winner.
He warned the executive to beware of the precedent they are setting because the decision could haunt the party in the future.
According to him, he prays that one day the precedent will be corrected no matter how long it takes.
John Kwabla Adanu made the call at a press conference where he questioned the decision of the National Executive Council (NEC) of the party to declare Edem Agbana the winner of the Ketu North primary.
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He wondered why the Council after identifying three unstamped ballots declared them as valid, on the premise that they had corresponding serial numbers with that of the booklet provided.
He entreated the party’s hierarchy to take a critical look at the NDC’s constitution and guidelines for internal elections.
After three rounds of counting, both aspirants polled 358 votes, after the Electoral Commission officials identified three unstamped ballots, two in favour of Edem Agbana, and one in favour of John Adanu.
Mr. Agbana had earlier insisted that he won the primary with 360 votes against his opponent’s 359 votes, though the EC had declared a runoff.
NDC General Secretary, Fifi Kwetey, on Tuesday announced that NEC had come to a consensus that the three unstamped ballot papers were taken out of the original ballot booklet provided.
”By and large, we got a consensus coming across the table that the ballot papers in question were an integral part of the booklet of ballots that came from the national office that went to that constituency.”
“And therefore they were not foreign materials. We also checked and saw that there was no over-voting. The tallying process done by the agents of the candidates tallied with all the ballot papers found in the ballot box”, he said.
Adanu, however, questioned if the decision now suggests the stamping of ballot papers during an internal election is irrelevant, given no over-voting and the correspondence of serial numbers to the booklets.
He, however, affirmed his continuous support for the growth of the NDC in the constituency and the ultimate goal of winning power in 2024.