Tsatsu Tsikata breaks silence on Supreme Court verdict, says ruling is ‘problematic’

Tsatsu Tsikata, the lead counsel for the petitioner in the 2020 election petition has commented on the ruling by the Supreme Court, saying he finds it ‘problematic’.

Tsatsu who is breaking his silence on the ruling in a yet-to-be aired interview with KSM on Pan African TV insists that per the declaration by the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission on December 9, 2020, no one should carry himself as President of the Republic of Ghana.

“What I think is most problematic about the judgment is that we have a situation in this country now, where if you base yourself on the declaration that was made by the chairperson of the Electoral Commission as we all heard, the number that she gave, there was not a constitutionally valid declaration because no candidate got 50%,” the veteran lawyer told KSM.

On March 4, 2021, seven justices of the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that they found no merit in the petition by John Dramani Mahama, the flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress in the 2020 elections.

Mahama was, among other things, seeking a rerun of the election based on his conviction that no candidate crossed the 50% plus 1 mark in the elections.

But the court in its ruling said that the petitioner built his case on the oral error by the EC chair and did not produce enough evidence to warrant the reliefs he was seeking.

“The petitioner has not produced any evidence to rebut the presumptions created by the publication of CI 135 for which his action has failed. We have, therefore, no reason to order for a rerun … we accordingly dismiss the petition as having no merit,” Chief Justice Anin-Yeboah ruled.