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General news for Thursday, January 21, 2021
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
2021-01-21
Kwasi Anin Yeboah, President of the Supreme Court
The outcome of John Mahama’s election petition will largely be determined by five key issues, as outlined on Wednesday, January 20, by Chief Justice Kwasi Anin Yeboah, who is presiding over the case.
The five key themes are:
1. Whether or not the Petition reveals a reasonable cause of action.
2. Based or not on the data contained in the declaration of the 1st Respondent and the 2nd Respondent as President-elect, no candidate obtained more than 50% of the valid votes cast as required by Article 63 (3) of the Constitution. 1992.
3. Whether or not the 2nd Respondent complied with Article 63 (3) of the threshold of the 1992 Constitution by excluding or including the results of the Presidential Elections of the Electoral District of Techiman South.
4. Whether or not the declaration of the 1st Respondent dated December 9, 2020 of the results of the Presidential Elections held on December 7, 2020 violated Article 63 (3) of the 1992 Constitution.
5. If the supposed filling of votes and other errors [……] affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election results.
About the election petition:
John Dramani Mahama after the December elections stated that he does not agree with the result of the election that was declared by the Electoral Commission on December 9, 2020.
Consequently, he filed a petition with the Supreme Court to challenge the election results.
In his petition, Mahama states that neither he nor Nana Akufo-Addo, who are the two main candidates, obtained the constitutional mandate of “more than 50% of the total valid votes cast” according to the results declared on December 9 by Jean Mensa , President of the EC.
Mahama further argues that if the December 9 statement that was based on incorrect results and an incorrect calculation of Techiman South’s pending results at the time was taken into account, then there was no winner, so a replay would be needed.
In short, Mahama, through his lawyers, is praying to the Supreme Court to annul the declaration of unconstitutionality of December 9 and further that all subsequent EC amendments, insofar as those amendments were announced without a Prior compilation in the presence of the candidates’ agents as required by the Constitutional Instrument (CI) 127, but which were imposed on the people of Ghana through unsigned press releases are null and void.
Akufo-Addo in his initial response indicated that the ballot padding test provided by the petitioner amounted to only 6,622 votes, which were insignificant since he was validly elected based on article 64 (1) by a margin of about 500 thousand votes.
He affirmed that more than 38 thousand results from polling stations witnessed by the general public and international observers attest to his triumph.
It also responded in paragraph 35 of its Response that the results were “corroborated by all the leading media in the country, as well as by many local and international observers.”
However, the EU Observer Mission has stated that the collection of results was “less transparent”.
CODEO, the Coalition of National Election Observers, also reported that they monitored the elections in only five percent of the more than 38,000 polling stations and that their computation of the results of the presidential elections was based on that sample alone.
The mainstream media have also admitted that they did not have the capacity to cover most of the polling stations, some like Metro TV and TV3, admitting that the PNP, Nana Akufo-Addo’s political party, gave them figures to announce.
The case is expected to end on February 10.
