Speaker Alban Bagbin
The General Secretary of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), John Boadu, has called on the public to disregard a statement attributed to him by the Speaker of Parliament, Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin.
Mr Bagbin is reported by a section of the media to have claimed that Mr John Boadu was on record to have admitted that the eighth Parliament had gone in favour of the opposition NDC, and so the NPP had to resort to other means to win back some seats.
The said statement is reported to have been made by the Speaker when he met a delegation of the Ethiopian Parliament, the Ethiopian Political Parties Joint Council (EPPJC), on Wednesday, August 12, 2021.
“They would have had a minority in Parliament with a president. Their General Secretary even announced it, but they, last-minute, made some movements and some seats were snatched. That one is a statement of fact,” Mr Bagbin was reported to have said.
Response
But Mr Boadu in a statement signed by his Press Secretary, Alhaji Iddi Muhayu-Deen, said at no point has he made any suggestion or announcement to that effect.
“Indeed, records have it that, in all the post-election press conferences and media engagements, the NPP, through its General Secretary and other leading members, had always maintained that it had won majority of the parliamentary seats,” the statement said.
The statement recalled that at one of such press conferences to “respond to the NDC’s false and absurd claim that they had won majority seats, and so, it necessarily meant that the party ought to be declared as winners of the 2020 presidential elections, John Boadu pointed out to them that it was possible for a party to win more seats in Parliament and yet lose the presidential elections.”
“The phenomenon of ‘skirt and blouse voting’, which has become a regular feature in our general elections, makes nonsense of the NDC’s proposition. The General Secretary, in analyzing the 2020 elections results, cited the case of the Central Region, where, even though the NPP won only 10 out of the 23 parliamentary seats, Candidate Nana Akufo-Addo won in 19 constituencies.
“In other words, the NDC only won 4 constituencies in the presidential elections even though they won majority seats in the region. He equally made mention of Akwatia, Jomoro and some other constituencies in the country where the NPP lost the parliamentary but won the presidential,” the statement said.
“As to how on earth Alban Bagbin and the NDC would interpret this analysis, which was based on facts and data at the time, to mean that Mr John Boadu was conceding that the NPP had lost the nationwide parliamentary elections to the NDC, can only be a monumental defiance of logic,” it added.
The statement wondered whether by the NDC’s logic it is also resorting to unorthodox means to seek to illegally overturn the parliamentary results of some constituencies since they are in court challenging the results of those seats.
“Once again, for the avoidance of doubt, the General Secretary of the governing NPP made no such suggestion or announcement as claimed by the Speaker of Parliament. Accordingly, Mr John Boadu, while advising the Rt Hon Speaker to rise above petty partisanship, is also entreating members of the general public to treat his recent unsubstantiated claim with all the disdain that it deserves,” the statement emphasised.
