EC flouted its own rules - Lecturer

The Electoral Commission (EC) of Ghana was “unreasonable” in disqualifying the flag bearer of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) from the 2016 presidential race, a senior lecturer at the Ghana Law School, Maxwell Opoku-Agyemang, has stated.

For him, he does not understand “why the EC failed to follow their own rules” in the first place, and “judging from Article 23 of our constitution, that amounts to unreasonableness and breach of natural justice”.

An Accra High Court on Friday, 28 October, ordered the EC to allow Dr Nduom to make the necessary corrections on his nomination forms for the December 7 presidential race.

Dr Nduom was part of 13 aspirants disqualified from contesting in the elections over alleged illegalities 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 details are as follows:

- One subscriber Richard Aseda (‘Asida’ on the Voters’ Register), with Voter ID no 7812003957) endorsed the forms in two different districts (pages 21 and 39).

The subscriber was found to be on the Voter’s Register in one district thereby disqualifying his second subscription and reducing the total number of subscribers to below the minimum required by the Law.

The same subscriber (Richard Aseda (‘Asida’) endorsed the form with different signatures in both portions of the nomination form. This raises questions as to the legitimacy of one or both signatures.

We will refer the matter of the possible forgery of the signature(s) to the Ghana Police Service and the Attorney

General for investigation and prosecution in line with the following sections of the Criminal Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29):

Section 211: Perjury

Section 248: making false declaration etc. for office or voting;

Section 251: Deceiving a public officer

Section 256: Corruption, Intimidation and impersonation in respect of election.”

Mr Opoku-Agyemang was of the view that the ruling of the court was not surprising because “they (EC) should have given the opportunity to the aspirant to make amends, failure to do so, then you act, but it seems to me that was not done”.