A member of the NDC legal team, Victor Kojogah Adawudu has cautioned that the effect of NDC’s joinder motion to the NPP petition should not be slighted, stating the application is loaded with legal issues.
Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, his running mate, and Mr Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, the National Chairman of the NPP, filed a petition at the Supreme Court challenging the declaration of President John Dramani Mahama as winner of the December 2012 presidential election.
John Mahama and the Electoral Commission were made the 1st and 2nd respondents respectively, but the NDC also filed to be joined in the petition on December 31, 2012. The Supreme Court has set January 22 for ruling on the joinder application.
The first petitioner had objected to the joinder arguing that it would unnecessary delay the court process, a view that has been shared by a cross section of Ghanaians.
But Victor Kojogah Adawudu told Joy FM’s Top Story hosted by Francis Abban that NDC’s lead counsel Tsatsu Tsikata debunked that claims in court today.
He explained that the NDC was only being proactive to “avoid multiplicity of cases and avoid the different legal suits that will come”.
He therefore warned that the joinder “might seem to be a simple application but it is an application that is loaded with legal issues.”
Meanwhile, a law lecturer at the University of Ghana, Kissi Adjabeng has described the tussle over the joinder as “much ado about nothing”.
“I do not see how the NDC’s case is going to be different from that of President Mahama; on the part of the NPP, I do not see the big deal about opposing the application. So I am saying that on both parties, it is a fight over nothing.”
However, Adawudu insisted that the interest of Mahama and NDC are not the same.
For instance, he said, the NDC has its social democracy policies to implement, therefore, he said if the president is not there they cannot implement the policies.