EC’s admission of error raises questions – Law lecturer

It further stated that "…this error has no bearing whatsoever on the total votes cast in the election and, consequently, the valid votes obtained by each candidate. The error would only affect the voter turnout percentage and change it from 79.43 per cent to 80.15 per cent."

But Mr Adjabeng said that admission in and of itself constituted grounds for the whole elections process to be thoroughly investigated.

For him, it was entirely legitimate to ask, “what other ‘genuine errors’ may have been made by the Commission in the election process which may have had a bearing on the outcome?”

He said the EC’s appeal to the Supreme Court to compel the petitioners to produce evidence to back their claims against the respondents was clear indication that the Commission was seeking to put the onus back on the NPP.

The petitioners, for instance, claim that voting without verification, which was a clear violation of provisions of Constitutional Instrument (C.I. 75) which required every voter’s identity to be verified through a biometric verification machine, was allowed in large numbers of polling stations across the country.

This has been rejected by the EC who are demanding proof.

A member of the legal team of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), which has applied to the Supreme Court to join President John Mahama in the case, Victor Adawudu, said the defence filed by the EC exposed the hollowness and the lies contained in the petition brought by the petitioners.

He said the request for better particulars of the claims of the petitioners would make the point quite succinct that they had no grounds in the first place to put in the petition.

Source Joy FM