It appears the justices of the Supreme Court, legal teams of respondents do not understand the election petition

The greatest fear is that the Justices of the Supreme Court sitting on the election petition and the Legal Teams of the First and Second Respondents (Electoral Commission and Mr Nana Akufo-Addo respectively) have shown lack of understanding of the petition although the Legal Team of the Petitioner (Mr John Dramani Mahama) have tried their best time and time again to explain what the petition is all about. The worst culprits are the Legal Team of the Second Respondent especially Hon Kojo Oppong Nkrumah and Mr Gabby Otchere-Darko.

They have demonstrated their lack of understanding and appreciation of the issues of the petition through continuous demand for and reference to the Petitioners own collated figures. The obsession of Hon Kojo Oppong Nkrumah and Mr Gabby Otchere-Darko with numbers may be politically motivated but the great danger it poses by misleading their supporters must not be lost on them.

What are the numbers of the presidential election?

The Returning Officer and the Electoral Commission have announced several figures popularly referred to as numbers as the result of the presidential election. The latest of the numbers are contained in the First Respondent’s statement of response to the petition. Nobody knows how the First Respondent came by the numbers. Furthermore, the Second Respondent has also not presented any numbers in their response to the petition so what is the basis of the relentless demand for the Petitioner’s numbers? We must also bear in mind that the collation of the results was not done or completed in accordance with the law and there is no Form 13 so the true results or figures or numbers of the presidential election are unknown.

Has NDC got its own correctly collated election results?

The cross-examinations of the witnesses of the Petitioner have revealed that the collation of the presidential election results at the National Collation Centre (Strongroom) was not completed at the time the Petitioner’s Agents left the Strongroom to convey message from the Returning Officer to the Petitioner and the hurriedly declared “cooked” results were put together within one hour in their absence. The message being conveyed was about irregularities and proposed process/meeting to deal with them. It also came to light that four (4) collated regional result tallies were also in dispute and have still not been resolved so how can the Petitioner collate own credible results to present to the Supreme Court?

Techiman South Constituency election results

It is a known fact that there was no collation or tallying of the election results at the Techiman South Constituency so by what means did the Electoral Commission get the result tally that has been presented in their statement of response to the court?

Conclusion

The call for the Petitioner’s own collated results or numbers is misplaced and borne out of ignorance or lack of understanding and appreciation of the issues in dispute. There are very serious legal issues to be determined which border on the validity of the collation and declaration of the presidential election results. The Petitioner’s Legal Team have made no secret about these and have also reiterated severally that the Petitioner is not the Returning Officer to declare the outcome of the election but to no avail. It is time the Court and the Legal Teams of the Respondents take a critical look at the petition again in order for acceptable judgment to be delivered which will address the issues in dispute to the satisfaction of all the parties and Ghanaians for peace to prevail and to protect our democracy.