• He testified to irregularities he observed in the EC strong room during the collation of results
• Former President Mahama lost the election petition in a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court
Dr. Michael Kpessah-Whyte of the opposition National Democratic Congress says he remains traumatized by his experience in the Electoral Commission’s national collation center during the 2020 general elections.
Dr Kpessah-Whyte was the second witness for former President John Dramani Mahama in the 2020 presidential election petition.
According to him, the actions of the EC at the collation center, otherwise known as the strong room, gave salient indications of a deliberate attempt to rig the elections in favour of the ruling party.
“I feel very traumatized by the experience of the strong room and the EC in the sense that for the first time in my life, I [saw] a blatant, dishonest deception and disregard for common sense displayed by the Electoral Commission,” he stated in an interview on Prime Morning monitored by GhanaWeb.
Dr Whyte who had stated a similar position in his testimony during the trial, maintained in the interview that the EC Chairperson, Madam Jean Mensa tricked him and the other NDC representative to leave the strong room and confer with Mr Mahama on issues related to the elections. He only found out later that she turned around to declare the final results without his presence.
“So for the EC to announce a result that invariably had to be changed several times clearly indicates that there was a deliberate, systematic decision to, as it were, undermine the sovereign will of the people and steal their mandate and give it to somebody else,” he retorted.
He noted that despite some concerns raised by himself and Robert Mettle-Nunoo about results received from the Greater Accra and Bono East regions, the EC went ahead to declare the final results making the EC’s actions suspicious.
“Those issues were not resolved, and as we realized that the EC didn’t seem to be giving any due attention to the concerns we were raising, my colleague [Rojo Mettle-Nunoo] and I agreed that we should go have a conversation with the EC chair who had for all this while been very absent from the place where this was taking place,” he recounted.
Former President Mahama who was the NDC’s presidential candidate for 2020, filed a petition to contest the EC’s 2020 presidential elections results which declared President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo winner.
Mr Mahama, whilst presenting his case before the Supreme Court, called three witnesses despite serving an earlier indication that he was going to call five witnesses to the stand.
His second and third witnesses; Dr. Michael Kpessa Whyte and Robert Joseph Mettle-Nunoo who were the NDC’s representatives in the EC strong room gave testimonies of some irregularities they observed during the collation of the presidential results.
But speaking in his interview on Prime Morning, Dr Kpessah-Whyte stated that his cross-examination by lawyers of the respondent was skewed.
“You have the situation where I could only speak to answer questions coming from the EC’s lawyers or lawyers of Nana Addo. To that extent, they were guided in what kinds of questions to ask, and my responses were based on the kinds of questions they asked.”
“If it were done in the manner in which the 2012 election petition was done, I would have been able to provide greater clarity to Ghanaians on some of the things that occurred,” he indicated.
Former President Mahama lost the election petition in a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court Read Full Story
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