All eyes will be on the Supreme Court tomorrow, 4th March,2021 as a decision will be made in the 2020 presidential election petition.
Former President John Dramani Mahama (petitioner) and President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo (second respondent) are in the midst of the country’s second presidential election petition, called “round two” .
The Electoral Commission (EC) (first respondent), an autonomous legislative body responsible for the organization of public elections, is at the core of this legal battle. Its decisions and supposed errors are the focus of the petition.
The petition was filed on December 30, 2020, and a seven-member panel of the Supreme Court, presided over by Chief Justice, Justice Kwasi Annin Yeboah, has been hearing counter arguments from respondents (EC and Akufo-Addo), who have mounted a two-pronged response, over the course of 55 days.
Former President Mahama is contesting the Election Commission (EC) Chairperson, Mrs. Jean Mensa’s declaration of President Akufo-Addo as the winner of the 2020 presidential election on December 9, 2020.
He argues that, according to the statistics used in the declaration, no candidate received more than 50% of the total valid votes cast, as required by Article 63 (3) of the 1992 Constitution, and that the EC Chairperson’s declaration on December 9 was therefore unconstitutional.
The respondents ( the EC and Akufo-Addo) have mounted a two-pronged response.
First, they stated that the figures in Mrs Mensa’s declaration indicate that President Akufo-Addo obtained enough valid votes to reach the constitutional threshold set by Article 63 (3) of the 1992 Constitution.
Second, they argue that the petition does not even fulfill the constitutional criteria for a presidential election petition under Article 64 (1) of the 1992 Constitution, and hence the petition is doomed to fail.
As a result, the petition can be categorized as a petition with estimates and suspected constitutional violations.
In simple terms, the petitioner is questioning the constitutionality of Mrs Mensa’s declaration that President Akufo-Addo is the President-elect based on the figures she issued on December 9, 2020.
As a result, the petition of the former President is based on the declaration.
According to the figures released by the EC Chairperson, none of the 12 presidential candidates who ran in the December 7, 2020 election reached the constitutional threshold for becoming President, which is securing more than 50% of the valid votes as stipulated by Article 63(3) of the 1992 Constitution.
As a result, Mr Mahama wants the Supreme Court to rule the declaration unconstitutional and order the EC to hold a runoff between him and President Akufo-Addo, arguing that they earned the most votes.
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One of the most important aspects of Mr Mahama’s case is a remark made by the EC Chairperson on December 9 to the effect that even though all the votes from Techiman South were added to Mr Mahama’s votes, President Akufo-Addo still met the 50% threshold.
The findings from Techiman South were still pending on the day of the announcement.
According to Mr Mahama, the EC Chairperson announced that the total valid votes cast were 13,434,574, minus the results of Techiman South, with President Akufo-Addo receiving 6,730,413 votes, or 51.595 percent of the vote, and he (Mahama) receiving 6,214,889 votes, or 47.366 percent.
He says that the real percentage for President Akufo-Addo minus Techiman South should be 50.098 percent, not 51.595 percent, based on the estimates.
He also said that his minus Techiman South percentage should have been 46.26 percent rather than 47.366 percent.
He argued that the Techiman South Constituency has a total voting population of 128,018 voters, which when added to the total valid votes cast as declared by the EC equals 13,434,574 plus 128,018 votes (13,562,592).
“As a result, if all the votes cast in the Techiman South Constituency were added to the petitioner’s (Mr Mahama’s) votes, the second respondent’s (President Akufo- Addo’s) votes would stay at 6,730,413, or 49.625 percent, while Mr Mahama’s votes would rise to 6,342,907, or 46.768 percent,” he stated.
According to the NDC presidential candidate, the EC’s assertion that even if all the votes in Techiman South were added to his (Mahama’s) votes, President Akufo-Addo would still meet the constitutional threshold of more than 50% of all valid votes cast was wrong.
Mr Mahama maintained that the only legal declaration was the one issued by the EC’s Chairperson on December 9.
He also alleged that the EC’s supposed post-declaration corrections were rife with errors and lacked clarity.
Both the petition’s substance and form have been attacked by the two respondents.
They identified the petition as incompetent on the form because it posed no cause of action and, as a result, the petitioner had not properly invoked the apex court’s jurisdiction to adjudicate on presidential election petitions as stipulated in Article 64 (1) of the 1992 Constitution.
According to them, anybody who filed a petition with the Supreme Court under Article 64 (1) of the 1992 Constitution would question the election’s validity.
They contend that former President Mahama is contesting the declaration on December 9, 2020, but fails to make any claims of voting irregularities in the 38,622 polling stations and 311 special voting centers.
According to President Akufo-Addo, such a move renders the petition “incompetent,” arguing that an alleged inaccuracy in the EC’s results declaration on December 9 does not invalidate President Akufo-election Addo’s on December 7.
Even if the declaration was flawed, as the petitioner argued, President Akufo-Addo said, that did not mean the election was null and therefore unconstitutional.
The EC, on the other hand, says that the petition is unsuccessful because it does not question “the lawfulness of votes” cast for any candidate in any polling station where the election was held.
In simple terms, President Akufo-Addo and the EC are making a case that former President Mahama’s petition cannot even be identified as a presidential election petition within the confines of Article 64 (1) of the 1992 Constitution.
In terms of substance, respondents say former President Mahama’s petition is baseless because the statistics he’s using to make his case clearly indicate that President Akufo-Addo will win the 2020 presidential election.
Mrs Mensa mistakenly read the statistic representing the total total number of votes cast as the one representing the total number of valid votes cast, and also gave President Akufo-Addo’s vote percentage as 51.59 percent instead of 51.295 percent, according to the EC.
The EC, on the other hand, stated that the errors were corrected on December 10 and that “the corrections and clarifications had no effect on the overall results as declared.”
As a result, the EC claims that former President Mahama’s “deliberate” dependence on figures published on December 9, 2020 to suggest that President Akufo-Addo did not receive more than 50% of valid votes is “misleading, untenable, and misconceived.”
According to President Akufo, the petitioner’s reliance on an EC error does not determine that no candidate won the election.
He says that adding up all of the total valid votes cast for all of the 12 candidates as announced by the EC equals 13,121,111, which he claims is the total valid votes.
As of December 9, President Akufo-Addo had 6,730,413 valid votes, according to the EC.
“A simple estimate of the valid votes declared in favor of the second respondent (President Akufo-Addo) as a percentage of the total valid votes of 13,121,111 yields a percentage of 51.295,” he added.
SOURCE: ATLFMONLINE
