The slow tactics adopted by Electoral Commission officials in collating the presidential and parliamentary results in the Tamale Central Constituency of the Northern Region has resulted in an uneasy calm among political party candidates and their supporters within the constituency.

As at 2:30pm yesterday, only 52 out of 136 polling station results had been collated but not yet certified by the Electoral Commission.

Apart from some challenges, the agents of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) representing President John Dramani Mahama and Lawyer Inusah Fuseini reportedly refused to come along with their copies of the Pink Sheets issued by the EC.

The NDC agents, in spite of the plea by the EC officials and agents of the NPP, refused to go for their Pink Sheets to make the process more credible and smooth.

Another issue that brought some contentious delay was when the NPP candidate, Dr. Iddrisu Anyars, raised an objection to the certification of results from the Mallam Fari polling station at Tishegu.

It was alleged that the Presiding Officer in charge of that polling station, through the influence of the Assembly Member for the area, relocated the polling station without relaying the information to the candidates, which, according to the NPP candidate, had deprived him of the opportunity to monitor the elections at the Imam Fari’s Mosque.

Other agitations also centered around a change of polling stations codes, wrong siting of polling stations without foreknowledge of the political parties, and many more. As a result, collation of the results came to a standstill for several hours.

The EC officials, therefore, withheld the collation to allow the correction of all the anomalies.

But, both the NDC and the NPP parliamentary candidates, Lawyer Inusah Fuseini and Dr. Iddrisu Anyars, have all expressed discomfort in the collation process so far, which, they claim, was creating a lot of anxiety among their followers.

Several supporters of the candidates had stayed throughout the night expecting the final declaration of the results. Efforts to speak with the officials of the EC proved unsuccessful.

In a related development however, the joint police and military team stationed at the Tamale Central Collation Centre have saved the Presiding Officer for St. Joseph Primary AA’ in the Tamale Central Constituency, Mohammed Bashiru Zakaria, from being lynched by some youth of Tamale for transporting sealed ballot boxes on a motorbike without security escort.

Mohammed Bashiru Zakaria arrived at the Tamale Central Collation Centre around 3:00am, amidst suspicion from the youth, who pounced on him with an attempt to destroy the ballot boxes, but for the timely intervention of the security personnel at the entrance of the collation centre.

The police and the military, earlier, also saved two other presiding officers carrying four boxes for the presidential and parliamentary ballots from Manhalia Islamic Primary School A and Gumbihini Primary School A, which also arrived at the collation centre around 2:00am.

Some of the youth raised serious alarm about why the boxes that were expected to arrive at the Collation at 8:00pm should rather arrive after 2:00am.

Following serious agitations by the youth, who had already tampered with the boxes and were pursuing the Electoral Officials in an attempt to lynch them, but the security personnel whisked the EC officials away and kept them in a police armoured vehicle for their own safety.

But the youth succeeded in destroying the ballot boxes, which were full of thumb-printed ballot papers mainly going for President John Dramani Mahama.

ghanaian chronicle