The Supreme Court has upheld Nana Akufo-Addo’s victory in the December presidential election, dismissing allegations of irregularities.
Opposition candidate, and former president, John Dramani Mahama filed a petition asking the court to annul the results of the elections and order a rerun because of alleged irregularities.
But the court ruled that Mr Akufo-Addo had obtained over 50% (51.295%) of total valid votes and that the electoral commission’s corrections of the declared results did not significantly impact the outcome.
According to the 7 member panel of Justices who heard the petition, the petitioner could not prove how the alleged errors made by the first respondent affected the validity of the declaration made by the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission on December 9, 2020
While reading the judgment of the apex court, Chief Justice, Kwasi Anin-Yeboah said: “The petitioner did not demonstrate in any way how the errors committed by the Chairperson of the first respondent affected the declaration of the election.”
According to the Court’s ruling on crossing 50%+1 votes threshold, there is no doubt that the EC chairperson announced 13,434,74 instead of 13,121,111 to be total valid votes cast. There is no doubt that the petitioner accepts that the total valid votes cast was 13,121,111. No legal basis for anyone to contend that the 13,434,574 should be used as total valid votes.
Read this too: Denkyirahemaa receives her Covid-19 jab
On the Techiman South allegations the court said “The computation will show that the second respondent made more than 50% plus one vote threshold. Even if all registered voters in Techiman South of 128,018 were added to the petitioner, the second respondent will still make the more than 50% threshold (50.79%). On this issue, the court said it was established in court that President Nana Akufo-Addo crossed the 50%+1 vote requirement even without the results from Techiman South constituency prior to the declaration of the presidential results on December 9, 2020.”
The court further ruled that there was no proof that the declaration of the election results by the EC violated Article 63 (3) of the 1992 Constitution.
“The error committed by the commissioner cannot void the declaration. Agreeing to the petitioner’s case will mean errors by the commission in a post will nullify the truth of the statement even if that is not the case. The Commission did not act in violation of Article 63(3) of the 1992 Constitution. The petitioner has not been able to prove that none of the candidates got more than 50% of the total votes cast.
On vote padding the court ruled that “this allegation was not proven by the petitioner. Evidence proves that even if the vote padding occurred, it would have been insignificant to overturn the election result. The Petitioner did not adduce cogent evidence to back this claim. The court expected the pink sheets to be exhibited to prove the claims. Allegations of wrong aggregations of votes were not proved. Even if the vote padding was accepted, it will not impact the validity of the votes of Nana Akufo-Addo.”
In concluding the Chief Justice said “this judgment by emphasizing that the petitioner did not demonstrate in any way how the alleged errors and the unilateral corrections by the 1st respondent affected the validity of the declaration made by the Chairperson of the 1st respondent made on the 9th December 2020 as already stated in this judgment. The petitioner has not produced any evidence to rebut the presumption created by the publication of CI 135…We, therefore, have no reason to order a re-run as sort by the petitioner. So we accordingly dismiss the petition.”
Source: ATLFMNEWS
