Just now, the news was released that Ghana’s main opposition party, NPP, has officially filed the petition with the supreme court over this year’s presidential election results. The news was expected, the continuation is not as clear…
Now it will be very exciting to see what the Supreme Court will do.
- Will it speed up the trial process?
- Will it make the evidence public?
- Will it order a recount of the vote? (the Supreme Court cannot change the results, only at most order a recount).
Today was the very last day to file (officially 21 days after election results are declared, but as the 30th falls on a Sunday…) and NPP have been very sparse with information of their case. I was nervous they wouldn’t even make it! Yesterday, journalists were waiting in vain! Finally, it was the party flag bearer, his vice and the party chairman who signed the petition as a registered voter has to complain, not a party.
Hopefully, this examination of the election will close what ever loop holes is still out there and strengthen the Ghanaian democracy. However, likely, the investigation will take a bit of time and the president elect, John Dramani Mahama will still be sworn in as planned on Jan 7th.
What then happens if a recount is ordered by the supreme court and it indeed confirms the election results add up to a different result?
These are indeed interesting times.
See TV3 and Daily Graphic for more details.
Sharing is caring!
1 Comment
Yes we are entering interesting times. The EC and the President elect have to respond within 10 days and then we can begin to examine the evidence. So far from what I have gleaned from the media these are brief details of their evidence
1. Over vote (ie votes more than ballot papers issued) 620,443
2. Voting without biometric verification 456,933
3. Polling Station tally Sheets with same serial number 50,278
4. Missing signature of Presiding Officer 208,523
5. Total votes in figures and in words mismatch 3,841
6. Total Votes queried 1,340,018
You can see from the above brief evidence that the allegation of wrong collation of figures does not feature in this evidence except 3,841 mismatch of figures and words on the tally sheet mentioned. It is instructive to note that they have not mentioned the constituencies in which these alleged irregularities occured. Since both parties have their strongholds knowing where these occured will give a better idea of the alleged irregularity. The best the Supreme Court could do is to disregard the results from the polling stations/ constituencies where the alleged over voting or voting with no verification took place if it is proven. Also they haven’t demonstrated how some of these votes went to the president elect. From what I imagine the evidence will be voluminous comprising the 26,000 polling stations accross the country. This will take months if not years to examine this evidence and calling over thousands of witnesses to confirm or dispute the alleged over voting figures. I will not be surprise if this case takes more than two years to complete because the defendants will like to call all the witnesses to dsprove the claim. It will be interesting to see how the case ends up. If it leads to tightening the loose ends of our electoral system then at least Ghana would have gained something from this exercise.