EC will not rescind decision on disqualification of Nana Konadu from contesting Dec 2016 poll
The Electoral Commission (EC) will not rescind its decision on the disqualification of the presidential candidate of the National Democratic Party (NDP), Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, from contesting the December 7, 2016 poll.
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A letter written on its behalf by its lawyer, Mr Thaddeus Sory, said the EC followed due process prescribed by law.
It also noted that it was not in doubt of the NDP’s resolve to pursue the matter to its logical conclusion in response to NDP’s threat to resort to the court to have its issues addressed.
Responding to an October 11, 2016 letter from lawyers of the NDP, its flag bearer and running mate, the lawyer for the EC, Mr Thaddeus Sory, said the EC “finds no legal basis to rescind its decision, especially that the statutory provisions upon which your letter is grounded does not allow our client such discretion.
“We do not doubt your clients’ resolve to pursue their cause to the ends afforded them by law but we trust your clients will as dutiful citizens of the Republic of Ghana, support our client’s constitutional mandate and effort to deliver free, fair and credible elections. “The smooth sailing of the process of our democratic evolution should be our mutual concern as well as primary and collective responsibility,” the EC’s letter, dated October 13, 2016 noted.
Disqualification
The EC, on Monday, October 10, 2016, disqualified 12 presidential aspirants from contesting the December 7, 2016election. Mrs Rawlings was disqualified alongside 12 others for various reasons ranging from forgery, impersonation and perjury.
A number of the subscribers of the presidential aspirants did not meet the requirements as stipulated in the Constitutional Instrument (C.I) 94meant for the conduct of the election Some of the subscribers also sponsored more than one candidate with the same names and voter registration details.
According to the EC, they only changed their signatures. Addressing a press conference last Monday in Accra, Mrs Osei indicated that issues of forgery, perjury, impersonation and deceit of a public officer would be referred to the GhanaPolice Service and the Attorney General for investigations and prosecution. The disqualified aspirants are Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom of PPP, Mr Hassan Ayariga of APC, Dr Edward Nasigri Mahama of PNC and Mr Kofi Apaloo of IPP. Other disqualified aspirants are MrT.N. Ward Brew of DPP, Mr Henry Lartey of GCPP, Richard Tetteh of USDP, Akua Donkor of GFP, Nana Agyenim Boateng of UFP and Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings of NDP. The others are Kwabena Agyei of RPD and Kwame Asiedu Walker, an independent candidate. Only four of presidential aspirants were cleared by the EC to contest Election 2016.
Letter from NDP
But the lawyer for the NDP, its presidential candidate and running mate, Mr Ace Anan Ankomah, wrote tothe EC demanding that his clients be instated on the grounds that the EC had no power to disqualify Mrs Rawlings. Mr Ankomah gave the EC 24 hours to meet the demands made or face legal action.
The letter, which was addressed to the Chairman of the EC, Mrs Charlotte Osei, emphatically stated that “please note that if these demands are not met forthwith and in any event within 24 hours of this letter, we have our client’s further instructions to institute legal proceedings against you to compel you to meet the aforesaid demands without further notice or recourse to you.”
EC’s response
The lawyer for the EC said the NDP, upon the presentation of its nomination forms, was given the opportunity prescribed by regulation 9(2) of C. I. 94 to make the necessary amendments and alterations to correct errors which the returning officer was capable of detecting without further checks, adding “your clients accordingly effected the appropriate amendments or alterations”.
One of the issues raised by the NDP was that a person caught for double registration ought to have been convicted before that person could be disqualified but the EC holds a different view and said: “We take the view that the criminal sanctions that a person may suffer as a result of committing an electoral offence is only one of the consequences for violating the rules on registration as a voter.
This consequences of a condition sine qua non for disqualification. “It said the barring of such persons by the EC was totally and completely exclusive of the criminal process, adding that “this argument is the basis upon which our client proceeds to clean the register periodically without any conviction of such persons”.
According to the EC, it would be failing in its constitutional duties to deliver a free, fair and credible election, if it acceded to the arguments of the NDP The EC lawyer further argued that the provisions for electoral offences were very clear and devoid of any ambiguity, noting that the offence arose during the registration and not after registration.
He said the offence stated under section 27 (b) of PNDCL 287 “is committed where in the process of applying to register in a divisional register, the same person applies to register in another divisional register without withdrawing his earlier application.
“Such a situation is completely different from a situation where the person has already registered his name in two different registers and has been identified with two numbers such as with the case of Salifu Abdulai,” Mr Sory said.
Counsel informed the NDP that “having regard to the facts applicable to the matter in respect of which your client was disqualified, we are in no doubt that section 27 of PNDCL 287provides no saving grace for your client.” Mr Sory said the EC disagreed with the NDP’s argument that a person convicted of an offence under section 27 of PNDCL 284 is still to enjoy the rights of a validly registered voter until he has finished serving his term of imprisonment.
Exclusion list
The NDP’s candidate was rejected by the EC because Abdulai, one of the people who signed the nomination forms, was on the EC’s exclusion list for double registration.
Mr Sory, therefore, argued on behalf of the EC that it was absurd for the NDP’s candidate to insist on being reinstated when she was a strong advocate for a new register to ensure a credible electoral register free of minors, foreigners and multiple registrations. “That your client now seeks to have multiple registrants included on the register with the right to vote more than once and upend the credibility of the voters register and the integrity of the elections, simply to advance her personal goals and ambitions; we find unacceptable,” counsel argued.
The EC’s lawyer argued that “it will be clearly subversive of the integrity of the electoral process to insist, as you now seem to be doing, that although our client’s biometric verification cleared
out all offending registration such persons should be allowed to enjoy the full rights of validly registered voters only because they have not been convicted and their names cannot be found in the record prescribed bysection 43 of PNDCL 284”.