Election Petition: Petitioners are only seeking new grounds - Abraham Amaliba

A member of the National Democratic Congress’s (NDC) legal team, Abraham Amaliba has accused the three petitioners seeking to overturn the results of the 2012 election, of clandestinely attempting to review their petition.

In his opinion, there is nothing with the initially amended petition and thus a further review was not necessary.

The petitioners on Thursday amended their petition because, according to them, they had found more electoral malpractices that characterized the 2012 general elections.

They have therefore asked for the results of 11,916 stations to be annulled instead of the 4,709 in the original petition..

Speaking on Citi FM’s Eyewitness news programme, Mr Amaliba noted that “all I sought to do is to find out whether by filling the amended petition it would substantially change the grounds upon which the petitioners first went to court.”

According to him, the constitution states that an individual was allowed to proceed as the petitioners have, within the initial 21 days. He added however that, per the constitution, if the amendment would substantially change the grounds upon which the petitioners went to court then "one can simply say that they are filling a new petition which is out of time."

He maintained that though it was the sole responsibility of the Supreme Court to decide, he was positive the petitioners were only seeking to enhance their grounds.

He noted: "I think it is important to read CI 74 together with CI 16 which is the Supreme Court rule. If you do that then you will come to one conclusion CI 16 allows for amendment."

“We will allow that the amendment takes place and as to whether the numbers that they have provided which is now over 11,000 polling stations amounts to new grounds or not the supreme court would decide that” he concluded.