Mahama’s court advice to Odinga was cynical – Martin Amidu

Martin Amidu has claimed that former President John Mahama’s advice to Kenya’s opposition leader Raila Odinga following his defeat in the country’s election was cynical.

Mr. Mahama advised aggrieved Odinga and his party to go to court for justice after they raised concerns over the results of the elections which declared victory for President Uhuru Kenyatta.

Kenya’s Supreme Court has subsequently annulled the results of the polls describing it as flawed.

In a statement on the development, Mr. Amidu said the former Ghanaian leader thought the court would have merely affirmed the victory of the President since he had “benefitted from such a situation in the Presidential petition of 2013”.

“Coincidentally, the head of a group of the election observers is reported to be our own John Dramani Mahama whom activists of free, transparent and fair elections, and anti-corruption crusaders had accused during the 2016 Presidential election in Ghana of using his appointment powers under Articles 43 and 70 of our Constitution for a rigging agenda. Having won the 2012 Presidential elections by a razor thin edge vote of the Ghana Supreme Court, he was cynical in advising the losing party in the Kenyan elections to concede defeat or challenge the results in the Kenyan Supreme Court, in the belief that once incumbent Presidents are declared winners of an election their Supreme Courts normally docilely endorse the declarations of the Electoral Commission even in the face of the glaring rigging of the election.

“John Dramani Mahama had benefitted from such a situation in the Presidential petition of 2013 and cynically thought his good friend, the President of Kenya Uhuru Kenyatta, whom he had invited as the special guest of honour during Ghana’s independent Celebrations in 2016, would have the benefit of the docility of the Kenyan Supreme Court just as he was the beneficiary of Ghana’s razor thin edge Supreme Court decision in 2013. I also have no doubt that John Dramani Mahama’s cynical advice to Mr. Odinga was informed by past decisions of the Kenyan Supreme Court where incumbents have been declared winners of the Presidential elections and his personal experience in Ghana,” Amidu wrote.