The outcome of Monday’s elections in Ghana seems to be taking a new twist as both the ruling party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), and the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) have claimed victory.
Incumbent President, Nana Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party contested against the former president, John Mahama of the National Democratic Congress and 10 other aspirants.
Even as vote counting has progressed and gradually coming to a close, Akufo-Addo, as at 8:00 pm on Tuesday, maintained his slim lead over Mr Mahama, in a ratio of 49.61 per cent votes to 49.04%.
The electoral body, at the end of collation, will declare the candidate who secures 50% plus one vote the winner.
However, Premium Times reports that at the parliamentary level, the NDC is edging the NPP narrowly, with 87 seats to the ruling party’s 84.
It would be recalled that prior to when voting started, the chairperson of the Ghana Electoral Commission, assured that the final results would be declared 24 hours after the close of voting on Monday. However, this is not the cases as up to this moment, final results have not been collated.
Following the narrow lead, the opposition, in a press conference announced that they had won majority seats – 141 out of the total 275 – in the parliament.
NDC supporters have taken to the streets to celebrate with wine glasses as they await the final results, while just a few kilometres away, close to the secretariat of the ruling NPP, a large crowd of supporters watched a live transmission of the election on a large screen.
Collins Nuamah, an NPP official, told the media that, “The NDC doesn’t have a system.
“We have proven over time that we have a system that will take account, tracking results from the polling stations to electoral areas to the constituencies to the regions and to the national.
“They (ruling party) are just throwing dust in the eyes of the Ghanaian people and the international world. we have a system, I can tell you authoritatively that as of this hour we have collected and collated about 98 per cent of the results nationwide.”
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