EC case gave us publicity we couldn’t buy - Nduom

The court case challenging the Electoral Commission’s disqualification of the presidential aspirant of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) has rather increased the publicity and visibility of the party, Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom, the party’s flag bearer, has said.

“In a way this has given us some type of visibility and publicity that we could never buy,” he told Emefa Apawu on Class FM’s 505 news programme.

An Accra High Court on Friday, 28 October, ordered the Electoral Commission (EC) to allow the flag bearer of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP), Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom, to make the necessary correction on his nomination forms for the December 7 presidential race.

Dr Nduom was one of 13 aspirants disqualified from contesting in the elections over supposed infractions on their nomination forms.

Dr Nduom, according to the EC, was disqualified because “the number of subscribers to his forms did not meet the requirements of Regulation 7 (2) (b) of CI 94.

The PPP took the case to court seeking “an order directed against the 1st respondent in her capacity as returning officer for presidential elections to grant the applicant the opportunity to amend and alter the one anomaly found in his nomination papers as well as accept his nomination papers as amended or altered to enable him contest as a presidential candidate for the 7th December 2016 elections”.

The court said the EC did not give the PPP fair opportunity to amend mistakes on its nomination forms.

Dr Nduom explained that even before the judgement they were “relentless”, which showed the positive attitude of the party.

For him, some challenges sometime present opportunities “so you are prepared for everything” since one never knows what might come his way.

“Sometimes, negative things happen but if you have good strength, good resolve, and focus, you can turn the negatives into positives, so that is what we have been trying to do since this matter came up,” he added.