EC prays Supreme Court to dismiss Mahama's ‘incompetent’ election petition

The Electoral Commission of Ghana (EC) is asking the Supreme Court to dismiss the election petition brought before it by leader of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Dramani Mahama. Flagbearer of the NDC in the December 7, 2020 presidential election sued the EC and the New Patrotic Party’s (NPP) presidential candidate in the December 7 election, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, at the apex court challenging the outcome of the election which declared Akufo-Addo president. Mr. Mahama wants highest court of the land to amongst other things to restrain President Akufo-Addo from holding himself as the President-elect. He also wants the apex court to order the EC to conduct a second election between him and President Akufo-Addo only arguing no candidate got more than 50% of the total valid votes cast in the presidential election. Another relief sought by the former president is for the Supreme Court to declare that the Chairperson of the EC, Jean Mensa, breached the 1992 Constitution, specifically Article 63 (3) when she declared Akufo-Addo as president-elect on December 9, 2020. The former president seeks these reliefs based on his claims that the results announced by Jean Mensa on December 9, 2020 could not have given any candidate the threshold required under Article 63 (3) to be elected president. He argues that, he was supposed to have gotten 46.26% and not 47.366% of total vote cast when the EC declared the results without the Techiman South results, an indication something went wrong with the EC’s computation. Mr. Mahama also alleged the EC “padded votes” in favour of president Akufo-Addo. But the EC in its response to the petition dismissed all the allegations and prayed the court to strike out the petition. “The 1^st Respondent [EC] accordingly raises a preliminary legal objection to the petition as being incompetent and not, as required by Article 64 (1) of the Constitution and the Rule 68 (1) of the Supreme Court Rules, 1996 (C.I 16) as amended, amounting to challenge the validity of the Presidential Elections conducted by the 1^st Respondent Commission on 7^th December 2020”, part of the EC’s response reads. “Wherefore the 1^st Respondent prays that the petition and all the grounds in support thereof be summarily dismissed by this Honorable Court for not disclosing any reasonable cause of action”, it continued. The EC insists it did nothing untoward in the conduct of the election to favour any candidate. It however concedes that there may have been some mathematical errors in some of its collations but argues those errors “did not have a material effect on the overall results declared”. The EC outlined the four-stage procedure set out in C.I 127 for the collation of Presidential Election Results and argued the procedure was followed to the letter. The Supreme Court is expected to start hearing the case on Thursday, January 14. By P.D Wedam|editors.3news.com|Ghana