The largest opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has declared Edem Agbana as the winner of the party’s parliamentary primaries held in the Ketu North constituency in the Volta Region.
This follows a meeting between the party’s Functional Executive Committee(FEC) and the two leading candidates of the primary.
Confusion broke out when Edem Agbana and his closest contender, John Adanu Zewu had tie in Saturday’s election Edem Agbana and his close contender with both candidates having the same number of votes.
Initially, Edem was declared the winner by a single vote in the contest, however following two recounts, the EC discovered 3 ballot papers that were not stamped with 2 of the 3 unstamped ballots cast in favour of Edem Agbana whilst 1 unstamped ballot was cast in favour of John Adanu.
General Secretary of the NDC, Fifi Fiavi Kwetey at a press conference in Accra on Tuesday explained why the party declared victory for Edem Agbana.
“By and large, we got a consensus coming across the table that the ballot papers [in question] were an integral part of the booklet of ballots that came from the national office that went to that constituency. And therefore they were not foreign materials. We also checked and saw that there was no overvoting. The tallying process done by the agents of the candidates tallied with all the ballot papers found in the ballot box.”
“These for us were the pieces of information we wanted to ascertain. So the ballot papers were authentic. Following this, we are of the position that, the will that the voters expressed is the authentic will of the people. That original result had candidate Edem Agbana having 360 votes followed very closely by candidate John Adanu who had 359. Very close as it was, we had to go by the will of the people of Ketu North.”
Fifi Kwetey added: “So we want to tell you that, at the end of the day, the committee headed by the National Chairman of the NDC, aided by my own self, the will of Ketu North was that Edem Agbana was the one that won the most number of votes on the day. Even though it was that close, Edem Agbana will be declared the winner.”
Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh
