NDC, NPP deny abuse of incumbency and vote buying

Government has denied reports of abusing incumbency in the lead up to the December elections.
A report released jointly by three civil society groups; the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD) and the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition has indicted President John Mahama and other officials of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) for various acts deemed to be abuse of incumbency.
The report also indicted the Presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Akufo-Addo of vote buying.
In an interview on Citi Eyewitness News on Friday, the Spokesperson for the President, John Jinapor, stated that the report is untrue.
He said: “President Mahama has tried as much as he can to do this campaign devoid of abuse of incumbency. Throughout our ‘Thank you tour’, President Mahama’s message was about peace. But I do not recall on any platform where President Mahama directly said that go and vote for me. As President, he will normally illicit the support of people to support this government and to be with this government; which is normal.”
Mr. Jinapor continued that “but in terms of specifics of saying that; look, when you go to the polls on 7th December go and vote for President Mahama, clearly under his watch he has tried as much as possible not to abuse incumbency.’’
Meanwhile, the spokesperson for Nana Addo, Mustapha Hamid has also denied the allegations brought against the NPP’s flagbearer.
“It is not correct; I was in the entourage of Akufo-Addo when we went to the Upper West region. And I can tell you as a matter of fact that our supporters have never ever drawn fuels from any filling station for free,” he stated.
Mr. Hamid explained that some individuals and party sympathizers willingly donate their resources to support the NPP campaign.
He said: “Any time we go on these tours in our various regions and so on, there are people who will go to a filling station and say this is my donation to the party; he pays some money to the filling station and then your party supporters can go and then take fuel and meet with their Presidential candidate. I don’t see how that amounts to vote buying.”
“As for the report that any vehicle at all in sight in Wa that day could draw fuel; I beg to differ, that is not possible, we don’t have a bottomless state of money,” he concluded.
By: Citifmonline.com/Ghana