EC Printed SALL Ballot Papers For Hohoe Parliamentary Election

President of policy think tank IMANI-Africa, Franklin Cudjoe, has revealed that the eleventh-hour declaration by the Electoral Commission (EC) that the people of Santrokofi, Akpafu, Lolobi and Likpe (SALL) could vote in the 2020 Presidential election but not the Parliamentary one was a “barbaric” and unconstitutional disenfranchisement of the SALL people.

In a post, Mr. Cudjoe reveals that the refusal to give the printed ballot papers to the SALL people to allow them vote for their parliamentary candidate was deliberate illegality orchestrated by the EC in connivance with some vested interests.

 Up until the eve of the elections when the EC made the announcement, people of the SALL areas had been constituents of Hohoe with both Presidential and Parliamentary ballot papers printed for them to vote in both elections.

“Ballots were apparently printed for Santrokofi, Lolobi, Akpafu and Likpe, to vote in Hohoe. Then on the eve of Dec 7, the EC through the connivance of vested interest issued the most barbaric order to these human beings not to vote,” Mr. Franklin Cudjoe tweeted today.

He later tweeted again that he does not believe that any judge or Lawyer would allow the illegality of deliberately disenfranchising Ghanaians to hold.

“No decent human being anywhere in robes, wigs or suits should be seen encouraging such.”

Already many people have responded that the seeming connivance to exclude the people of the SALL from voting in the Parliamentary election in Hohoe was between the NPP’s Parliamentary Candidate, John Peter Amewu and Jean Mensa’s EC.

On account of the exclusion of the over 17,000 voters there, Amewu was declared winner after a narrow win over the NDC’s Prof. Margaret Kweku. 

Prof. Kweku secured an injunction against Amewu holding himself out as MP-elect for Hohoe but the Attorney General has gone to the Supreme Court asking for the injunction to be quashed in what will force the SALL people not to have representation in the Ghanaian Parliament.

Meanwhile, Amewu has used trickery to evade being served the court suit from the Ho High Court. His personal thugs even beat up a court bailiff who tried to serve him.

Amewu suddenly popped up on Monday, December 4, 2020, in Parliament to register as an MP-elect for Hohoe.

The current drama in Hohoe is playing out in spite of the fact that the EC itself had said that until the new a new constituency is created for the SALL people, they were entitled to vote in Hohoe as their mother Constituency.

On November 30, 2020, Mr. Samuel Tettey, Deputy Chairman of the EC, explained, “Voters who used to be with those four communities will not be disenfranchised. What we know is that without the amendment of the 119 and 128, they still fall under the Buem constituency. We must take note, we have actually issued the writ of election, we have gazette it and the register that is going to be used still has the names of those voters in the proposed Guan district or constituency. So they will not be disenfranchised, they will take part in both the parliamentary and the presidential elections. So Hohoe as well as Buem and Jasikan are going to have their presidential and parliamentary elections. With the Guan, we haven’t actually created the constituency so those areas still fall under the mother district or constituency. We have to amend 119 as well as 128 and we have to kick start the processes leading to the creation of a constituency, so all those communities still fall under their mother district and constituency and for that matter, they will be voting in both the presidential and parliamentary in their mother district or constituency.’’