The National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament for Afram Plains North in the Eastern Region, Emmanuel Aboagye Didieye, who lost his bid to return to Parliament in 2016 has threatened legal action against the Electoral Commission over his defeat last Saturday.
The incumbent MP polled 2,529 representing 27.70% of the total votes cast, while the winner, Betty Krosby Mensah polled 2,664 votes representing 29.18% of the votes.
Aboagye Didieye
He lost to a former Deputy Coordinator of the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA).
However, Emmanuel Aboagye Didieye has told Accra-based Citi Fm, the Electoral Commission’s handling of the voting process in the constituency is to blame for his defeat, and has therefore resorted to the court to challenge that.
“I want to go to court because I have realized that the EDC did not work according to the electoral rules of our party. According to the notice of poll that was given to EC they were supposed to start from seven to five pm. But they got to some polling stations and started around 4pm and ended at six pm meaning that they worked for only two hours. So there was low voter turnout. He claimed that in some areas, due the late closure of polls people who would have voted for him were disenfranchised."
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He said "there were also some votes that were declared as rejected ballots which I realized that they were not supposed to be considered as rejected but because they didn’t add challenge forms to it, there was no way we could file a challenge so there was a handwritten challenge and they ignored the recount.”
The incumbent MP believed that he would have won the elections if the Electoral Commission had gone strictly by the time to close the polls to enable more people vote.
