The Electoral Commission (EC) and President Nana Akufo-Addo have urged the Supreme Court to dismiss a petition filed by former President John Mahama challenging the results of the 2020 Presidential election.
The EC in its legal argument on a preliminary objection to the petition, states that the former President’s legal action is based on extreme speculations which amounts to a waste of the court’s time.
The President on his part described the petition as incompetent and discloses no reasonable cause of action in terms of Article 64(1) and ought to be dismissed.
Mr. Mahama is before the Apex Court challenging the results of the 2020 Presidential election which he claims none of the candidates who participated had more than 50 per cent of valid votes as required by law to be declared winner.
He is seeking the court to order the EC to organize a run-off election between himself and Nana Akufo-Addo.
But the EC and Nana Akufo-Addo in their responses denied the allegations, saying they are unfounded and the petition disclosed no reasonable cause of action.
The two respondents subsequently raised preliminary objections urging the court to dismiss the action before it.
EC’s Argument
The EC in its legal argument states that the petition is based on speculations which hang on two main assumptions.
The first assumption according to the EC is Mr. Mahama’s decision to keep relying on an inadvertent error made by the EC Chairperson when she announced the results on December 9, 2020.
It says Nana Akufo-Addo obtained 6,730,413 representing 51.295 per cent of the total valid votes.
The second according to EC is
The other assumption the EC says is the former President’s decision to assign all the results from the Techiman South Constituency to himself although the outcome of the election in that constituency was known to him at the time he filed the petition.
Nana’s Argument
The President in his argument states that the petition primarily hangs on the initial error made by the EC Chairperson when she announced the results.
“At the heart of the case of Petitioner, are the unfounded and exaggerated extrapolations petitioner makes out of the erroneous interchanging of total votes cast for total valid votes cast by 1st respondent (EC) when declaring the results of the Presidential Election on 9th December 2020.”
The President also questioned Mr. Mahama’s relief seeking a re-ruling, saying it “simply defies logic and is utterly untenable. In effect, petitioner entreats the Court to embark on a fruitless exercise to order a second election based on a skewed hypothetical analysis which completely ignores the actual votes obtained by himself as well as all other candidates in the Techiman South Constituency.”
The two are therefore urging the court to dismiss the petition for disclosing no reasonable cause of action.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak