At 3:00 p.m. on January 28, 2013, the National Democratic Congress filed their response to the petition filed by the leaders of the New Patriotic Party (Presidential Candidate of the NPP, Nana Akufo-Addo Dr Mahamadu Bawumia, the running mate of Nana Akufo-Addo and Chairman of the NPP, Mr Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey) at the Supreme Court, Ghana News Agency confirmed.
This follows the nod given by the Supreme Court on January 22, 2013 for the NDC to be joinder to the petition which seek to annul results of 4,709 polling stations due to certain irregularities.
In response to the petition, the NDC described the petitioner’s petition as an “afterthought and in bad faith” which is a plot to “deny certain Ghanaians of their constitutional right without any justification.”
Petitioners, through the acts of their polling agents at the various polling stations as well as acts of other representatives, clearly acknowledged that the presidential elections were validly conducted and claims to the contrary now by the petitioners are an afterthought, and in bad faith and cannot be countenanced.
The conduct of both the presidential and parliamentary elections involved citizens exercising their right to vote in full view of the public, the media and domestic as well as international election observers
The results of the presidential showed that the first respondent defeated the first petitioner in eight out of the ten regions of the country.Petitioners are acting in bad faith and that the petition is frivolous, vexatious and an abuse of the process of this Honourable Court.
The NDC therefore stated that there were no irregularities and the election was clearly transparent and valid.
the categories of alleged irregularities set out by petitioners clearly overlap, and, therefore, adding the votes in these categories as a pattern of obfuscation resorted to by petitioners to create an appearance of a real issue when there is none