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Prof. Atta Mills warns against vote rigging
Accra, Jan 9, Ghanadot/GNA - Professor John Evans Atta
Mills, Flag bearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC)
for the Election 2008, on Wednesday warned that the party
would not entertain any attempt by any political party to
steal the verdict of the people in the December elections.
He told journalists in Accra; "the NDC and the fair minded
Ghanaians will categorically reject out of hand the
fraudulent results so proclaimed and will adopt all
legitimate means to seek redress to any such political
misconduct".
This was at a press conference organised by the party to
state their reaction to the recent occurrences in Kenya,
following the general election and how it related to Ghana
and the rest of Africa.
Prof. Mills drew some similarities between the main cause of
the Kenyan incident and the alleged "stolen verdict" in
Ghana's 2004 elections, saying that in both cases, ballot
papers were destroyed illegally before a possible recount.
"The similarities in the unfortunate situations in both
Ghana and Kenya are too glaring to be ignored, especially as
there is a high probability of their repetition in our
forthcoming general elections," he said.
He accused the ruling New Patriotic Party government of
creating conditions that could have brought the country
close to violent confrontation at the end of the 2004
elections and assured Ghanaians that the NDC would not allow
the
NPP to repeat such a conduct as they did in 2004.
Prof. Mills also warned against pre-elections violence,
citing the Pakistani incident in which former Prime Minister
and opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was killed and urged
the ruling party to ensure the safety and security of
presidential and parliamentary candidates as well as all
citizens in the coming elections.
Asked what the NDC was doing to avert any possibility of
vote rigging in the 2008 elections, Prof. Mills replied
"once bitten, twice shy."
He declared his support for the Kenyan Orange Democratic
Movement (ODM) led by Raila Odinga, in the bid to seek a
re-run of the elections because ballot papers had been
destroyed and therefore there could not be a recount.
"The NDC supports that demand as the most likely route to
the determination of the unequivocal wish of Kenyans in the
presidential elections - we urge that the re-elections
should be supervised by the international community," he
said.
He expressed his condolences to the families of the deceased
and expressed the hope that peace would be restored to that
country soon.
Prof. Mills noted that whiles it was within the duty of
President John Agyekum Kufuor as Chairman of the African
Union (AU) to mediate the Kenyan crisis, the President
should have first attended to the crisis in his own back
yard in Bawku in the Upper West Region.
"The point is not lost on many Ghanaians that President
Kufuor has not yet visited the Bawku area but has managed to
visit other countries in similar difficulties," he said.
GNA
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