According to him, unlike in the 2020 election when the NDC and its representatives were said to have been negligent, hence the party’s loss to the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party, the forthcoming election with be different.
Mahama said this among other things on Tuesday, April 18 while addressing NDC delegates at Ashaley Botwe in Greater Accra Region as part of a nationwide campaign tour ahead of the party’s Presidential Primaries next month.
“We are not going to sleep. We are going to match them at the collation centers. We will be in the collation centers until the last ballot is accounted for. We are going to Match them in the EC’s strongroom. This time we don’t want tea we don’t want biscuits. Those we select to go to the strongroom we will give them our own tea and we will buy them digestive Biscuits to go to the strongroom,” starfm.com.gh quotes him as saying.
“Elections are won or lost at the polling stations..and in all your branches you have polling stations. Vigilance at the polling stations is going to be in your custody. Campaigning in the polling station is going to be in your care and so we are going to rely on you to make sure that the election in your polling station is going to be free, fair and transparent. And we are putting in a robust system to be able to transmit out results and you the branch and constituency executives are going to be involved. It is a new system we will come and explain it to you.”
It would be recalled that during the 2020 Presidential election petition filed by NDC’s Presidential candidate, Mahama at the Supreme Court, Rojo Mettle- Nunoo and Dr Kpessah Whyte who represented the party at the collation Center of the Electoral Commission were accused of not being watchful.
The two senior NDC officials had accused the Electoral Commission chairperson, Jane Mensah of outsmarting them by asking them to leave the EC premises to go and speak with Mahama about a certain anomaly detected in some of the election results. They claimed that in their absence, the EC announced the overall election results even before they could return.
However, drama ensued during cross-examination at the Supreme Court by Justin Amenuvor, the lead counsel of the Electoral Commission (EC) when Rojo Mettle- Nunoo, in an attempt to deny feeding on tea and biscuits provided by the EC and neglecting his duty, said that “I was offered tea, I wasn’t offered any biscuit”.
Mr Mahama said that will not happen in the next elections because the party will make every necessary preparation to make its representatives self-sufficient at the EC strongroom.
He went on further to say that regardless of how many NPP activists the NPP government packs the EC with, vigilance on the part of the NDC will make their alleged election-rigging attempts counterproductive.
“Because they are afraid of losing the 2024 election they have started putting NPP activists as members of the Electoral Commission so that they can control the referee but when I say it is a Do or Die affair it means that it is a critical election whether they put NPP chairman on the electoral commission we shall match them boot for boot. We are going to match them at the polling stations we don’t Wana cheat anybody, but we don’t want anybody to cheat us. So we are going to mark them at the polling station and make sure that no extra ballot papers come from somewhere into that ballot box”.
Stakes in the 2024 elections are high as the NDC is bent on recapturing power from the NPP which it lost to in 2016.