Respect Supreme Court ruling
A member of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s legal team, Mr Frank Davies, has called on Ghanaians to respect the decision of the Supreme Court.
He, therefore, stressed the need to give the President and his appointees the needed support to run the machinery of the State.
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Mr Davies made the call after a seven-member panel of the Supreme Court had dismissed former President John Mahama’s suit challenging the 2020 presidential election results.
In reading the judgment last Thursday, the Chief Justice, Justice Kwasi Anin Yeboah, stated that the petitioner failed to prove his case beyond reasonable doubt and added that the errors announced by the Electoral Commission (EC) Chairperson, Mrs Jean Mensa, which were subsequently corrected, could not be used to invalidate the election.
Mr Davies said: “We thank our good friends on the other side for their bravery in mounting this petition, albeit we all found that the petition indeed contained nothing but factual errors and inaccuracies, "he said.
Litigation
He said litigation must always come to an end and he was of the belief that "this was the end of the 2021 Election Petition."
Mr Davies said while the 2013 petition mounted the challenge of validity of the election and called for the annulment of four million votes due to over voting, irregularities, lack of biometric verification machines, among others, the 2020 petition was basically a challenge against the declaration of the results and not the validity.
It was the declaration of the results the petitioner sought to challenge but the Court held that the declaration of the results was done in connection with the data provided by the EC.
Declaration
The Court also indicated that the declaration of the results did not violate Article 63 (3) of the 1992 Constitution and that the EC’s errors could not take away the will of the people.
The Chief Justice said the accounts of Mr Robert Joseph Mettle-Nunoo and Dr Michael Kpessa-Whyte, witnesses of the petitioner were immaterial to the case since the issue in contention had nothing to do with how the results were collated at the EC’s national collation centre, popularly known as the Strong room.
The Court said: “We, therefore, have no reason to order a re-run as sought by the petitioner, so we accordingly dismiss the petition.”
Annulment
Former President Mahama filed a Petition at the Supreme Court seeking an annulment of the presidential election results and a re-run of the election between him and Nana Akufo-Addo, the Second Respondent in the petition.
The Petition also sought an order directing the 1st Respondent, the Electoral Commission, to proceed to conduct a second election between the petitioner and the 2nd Respondent as candidates, as required under Articles 63 (4) and (5) of the 1992 constitution.