Election Nerve CentreGhanaHeadlineLegalNews

Supreme Court delivers judgment on Mahama’s election petition

After weeks of hearing, the seven-member panel led by Chief Justice Kwasi Anin-Yeboah will deliver judgment on Thursday 4 March 2021

The Supreme Court will today (4 March 2021) deliver a much-awaited judgment in the Election 2020 petition.

The seven-member panel, presided over by Chief Justice Kwasi Anin-Yeboah, has asked lawyers for the parties in the case to file their closing written addresses.

Lawyers for the petitioner (the former president John Dramani Mahama), first respondent (the Electoral Commission) and second respondent (President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo) have all filed their closing addresses.

The petitioner called three witnesses – Dr Michael Kpessa Whyte, Joseph Robert Mettle-Nunoo, both members of the National Democratic Congress, and Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, general secretary of the party.

The main matters

Issues to be determined by the Supreme Court include whether there is any legal ground to the petition and whether or not President Akufo-Addo met the Article 63(3) threshold set out in the 1992 constitution.

Article 63(3) stipulates that a presidential candidate must obtain 50% of the total valid votes cast plus one vote before he or she can be declared president-elect.

It will also determine whether or not the declaration by the EC on 9 December 2020 was in violation of Article 63(3) as well as whether or not the alleged vote padding and other errors complained about by the petitioner affected the outcome of the last presidential election as announced on 9 December 2020.

Applications dismissed

The petitioner’s applications to force the Electoral Commission chairperson, Jean Adukwei Mensa, to mount the witness box were dismissed by the Supreme Court.

They include application for interrogatories, application for stay of proceedings, application for the petitioner to reopen his case and subpoena the EC boss for cross-examination, and application for review of the court’s decisions.

In the case of the two respondents, they declined to testify after the petitioner had closed his case.

Akoto Ampaw, the lead counsel for the second respondent, had told the Supreme Court: “We do not intend to call any witnesses to satisfy the burden of proof.”

Representing the Electoral Commission, Justin Amenuvor, lead counsel for the EC, argued that there was sufficient evidence before the court after the petitioner had called in three witnesses and closed his case.

Quoting the court’s rules and constitutional instrument (CI 87), Amenuvor said: “We close our case. We are not calling any witnesses; we wish to rely on our witness statement filed by the first respondent (EC).’’

The lead counsel for the petitioner, Tsatsu Tsikata, argued that it was not open to the EC to take the course it had proposed to the court.

He said the EC could not evade cross-examination, adding that the course it had taken did not form part of case management during the trial.

A game of numbers

John Dramani Mahama proceeded to court on the basis that no candidate won the 2020 Presidential Election and, therefore, the declaration of President Akufo-Addo as the winner by the EC Chairperson was “null and void”, unconstitutional and of no legal effect.

He argued that, according to the results, no candidate obtained more than 50 per cent of the total valid votes cast as required by Article 63(3) of the 1992 constitution.

He said the EC chairperson announced the total valid votes cast as 13,434,574 minus the results of Techiman South, with President Akufo-Addo obtaining 6,730,413, representing 51.59%, while he (Mahama) got 6,214,898 representing 47.366%.

Mahama said the figures showed that the actual percentage for President Akufo-Addo minus Techiman South ought to be 50.098% and not 51.595%, as announced by the EC chair.

He argued that his own percentage minus Techiman South should be 46.26% and not 47.366%.

Techiman South had a total voter population of 128,018 and if that was added to the total valid votes cast it would be 13,434,574 plus 128,018 (13,562,592), he said.

Mahama said it was erroneous for the EC to state that even if all the votes in Techiman South were added to the petitioner’s votes, President Akufo-Addo’s votes would still remain the same at 6,730,413, now yielding 49.625%, while his own (those of the petitioner) would increase to 6,324,907, now yielding 46.768%.

Accordingly, the EC chairperson’s claim that adding all the 128,018 votes in Techiman South to the votes standing in the name of the petitioner would not change the results was clearly wrong.

Lacking in merit

President Akufo-Addo and the EC, in their responses, argued that the petition was incompetent, lacked merit and raised no reasonable cause for action.

They contended that the petition did not meet the requirement of a presidential election petition as stated in Article 64(1) of the 1992 constitution, and that it was therefore incompetent.

They said that the petition made no allegations of infractions in the election at any of the 38,622 polling stations and 311 special voting centres.

The EC argued further that the petition was incompetent because it did not contest “the lawfulness of votes” obtained by any candidate at any polling station where the election was held.

It admitted that Jean Mensa inadvertently read the figure representing the total number of votes cast as the one representing the total number of valid votes cast and also gave the percentage of votes secured by President Akufo-Addo as 51.59% rather than 51.295%.

However, it averred that the EC corrected the errors on 10 December 2020 and even stated that “the corrections and clarifications did not affect the overall results as declared”.

As such, the EC held that: “Mahama’s deliberate reliance on the figures declared on 9 December 2020 to make a case that President Akufo-Addo did not obtain more than 50% of the valid votes cast was misleading, untenable and misconceived.”

President Akufo-Addo said the corrections by the EC on 9 December 2020 were done within the powers of the EC and did not breach any law or statute.

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Source
Ghana News Agency
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