Director of Elections of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Elvis Afriyie Ankrah has said that the petitioner in the 2020 election petition, John Dramani Mahama and for that matter, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), had a good reason for not adducing any pink sheet in court.
He said they had done their research into past election petition hearings in the country and concluded that they were not going to send pink sheets because of the findings they made.
Me Afriyie Ankrah believes that the dismissal of their case was not as a result of the failure to produce pink sheet rather, he said, it appeared to them that the seven justices of the Supreme Court who sat on the case had already made up their mind that they were not going to listen to the petitioner, John Dramani Mahama.
He made this claim on the back of the unanimous dismissal of almost all the applications they put before the apex court during the hearing and also the dismissal of the entire case.
It is recalled that the petitioner filed a number of applications during the hearing including one on interrogatories that was seeking the first respondent, the Electoral Commission to answer some questions relating to the declaration of the election results.
But the court by a unanimous decision dismissed these applications after lawyers of the respondents had mounted counter arguments against those applications.
Mr Mahama had gone to the highest court of the land to challenge the presidential results announced by the EC Chair Jean Mensa that declared President Nana Addo DanKwa Akufo-Addo winner of the polls.
In the view of Mr Mahama, no candidate polled the number of votes to win the presidential elections.
He asked the court to compel a rerun of the polls but after four months of hearing the case, the court by a unanimous decision dismissed the petition on the grounds that it was without merit.
Following that, the NDC has tabled a number of electoral reforms to improve on elections in Ghana.
Discussing these proposals on TV3’s Key Points with host Dzifa Bampoh on Saturday August 28, Mr Elvis Afriyie Ankrah said among other things that “The court did not allow us to ask the questions that needed to be answered. Bring the documentary evidence that formed the basis of you declaring results six times, unprecedented in this country.
“We have been to court with the NPP before. They brought pink sheets , go and read the judgement of the court , so we are not daft.
“When you are going to court on a case you do your research and you look at what the judges say on various issues and then you build your case basis on those precedence so you look at when pick sheets were produced what was the posture of the Supreme Court ?
“I was in court almost everyday, the posture of the court and the fact that consistently on every single issue there was unanimity , even if we had taken all the pink sheets in this world and added Angel Gabriel as witness with Angel Michael as a technical advisor it will still have been a unanimous , unfortunately that is my view. It appeared as if they had just made up their minds that they were not going to listen to us.”
By Laud Nartey|3news.com|Ghana