Dr Kwabena Duffuor has promised to install a real-time vote compilation system for the National Democratic Congress in the 2024 elections so the party can monitor the results as they trickle in instantly.
The former Bank of Ghana Governor, who is one of four flag bearer aspirants of the NDC, told journalists during his presidential declaration event that he intends to change the party’s vote-monitoring and results-compilation system during general elections.
Asked how he plans to do that, the former finance minister said: “Real-time”.
“You know real time?” he asked his questioners, explaining: “As you vote, we’ve a system that’ll pick it”.
In December last year, Mr Johnson Asiedu Nketia, the then-general secretary of the party, who was aspiring to the national chair slot at the time, revealed to some party delegates in the Ashanti Region during his campaign for the internal polls that the biggest opposition party was unable to collate results in the 2020 polls because an IT system installed by the Chairman at the time, Mr Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, who lost his re-election bid, crashed after just five regional results were entered into it for processing.
In a leaked audiotape, Mr Nketia is heard telling his audience: “I totally understand if anyone says I’m partly to blame for the collation fiasco because all those people undertaking the process were reporting to me but the bit of it is that there were people tasked to do that job”.
He continued: “Mr Ofosu-Ampofo’s so-called ‘robust’ and ‘strong’ IT system he had installed for the collation of results crashed after just five regional results were entered into it for processing”.
“So, that is the truth of the matter”, Mr Nketia noted.
Following the mishap, Mr Nketia said: “We then decided to manually collate the pink sheets”.
Again, he said “the Chairman took over the whole process and brought in some university students to put some documents together”.
However, he recalled: “When it was time for me to mount the dock, it was clear the results they gave me to back our case in court would have brought me nothing but shame and disgrace”.
“We could not have gone to court with those documents as evidence”, he asserted.
“We then carried those same documents to Mr Tsatsu Tsikata, the lawyer, for perusal.
After studying the documents, he called us the following day to say if that was the evidence we were taking to court then he wouldn’t be part of the case and suggested we find a different lawyer to represent the party in court since there was no way he was going to be part of it”, Mr Nketia recounted.
“That is why I told the court we didn’t bring any results when I was asked to produce the evidence”, Mr Nketia explained to his audience.
The Supreme Court, eventually, threw out the petition and upheld the results declared by Electoral Commission Chair Jean Mensa.
Mr Nketia promised that should he become the next chairman of the NDC, “I intend to make sure this collation fiasco never happens again”.
