A former Minister of state at the Presidency, Rashid Pelpuo, has claimed that the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) collation system broke down completely at the most critical moment of the 2016 election.
This, he said, made it difficult for the party to have a full grasp of the turf when the NPP had begun churning out electoral results.
His comments follow the release of the Kwesi Botchwey Committee report that recommended among other things, measures that could improve the collation of election results by the party.
Speaking to Citi News’ Duke Mensah Opoku, the Wa Central MP, Rashid Pelpuo, said NDC just gave away the 2016 elections per the party’s own posturing to certain key elements in electioneering.
“As at the time NPP was churning out results and claiming victory, the NDC had not gotten a grasp of what was happening. Our system even broke down and we could not assess the results the NPP was getting, neither could we see what we were even getting so there was a problem there. Our ability to utilize technology to understand what was happening and to be able to get into the depths to know the votes that we got, was lacking, and that eventually was one of our setbacks. Even if you are losing, you still need to know that you are losing. We were being told we were losing from our opponents and we did not have enough information to counter it. .. There was a technological deficit.
There was inadequacy in technology in responding to the challenge at the time and I believe it is one of the areas that will be tackled in the very near future when we are going into the next election.”
He said going forward, the party should be “up to date in technology and be able to transmit results more efficiently” to secure victory in the 2020 elections.
The 13-member committee set up by the NDC to probe its defeat in the 2016 election, presented its findings to the National Executive Council (NEC) on Monday.
As part of its recommendations, the committee asked the NDC to take a holistic look at its biometric electoral register.
The 55-paged report, titled, ‘listening to the grassroot’, said the NDC must take urgent steps to restore the integrity of the register.
Speaking at the presentation of the report, the Chairman of the Committee, Prof. Kwesi Botchwey, expressed hope that the recommendations will help capture power for the NDC in the next elections in 2020.