Supreme Court Will Not See Fraud Where None Took Place

By Kofi Thompson

In December 2008, when Atta Akyea & Co. sought to deny Ghanaian voters the change many wanted, by arranging to have a case with massive ramifications surreptitiously heard on a public holiday, Providence intervened.

And the end that that legal sleight of hand sought - to steal an election with the help of a judge they thought was a "right judge" (to quote Atta Akyea and Malik Yakubu Alhassan) - failed to materialise.

Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo is a good and decent man. His curse is that he is surrounded mostly by people with inflated-egos, who unfortunately lack the wisdom of great men like J. B. Da Rocha.

Alas, today, the principled Da Rocha is no longer around to stand up to the mendacious, amoral and power-hungry lot, whose dreams of ruling our nation has been shattered yet again, and tell them to the face that what they seek is neither in the interest of the nation nor that of their party.

What the too-clever-by-half politicians with inflated egos seeking to subvert the will of the ordinary people of our country yet again, forget, is that in the era of Facebook and Twitter, no self-respecting professional is unaware that the judgement of one's peers is no longer limited to peers within national boundaries.

It is not for nothing that Providence ensured that at this critical juncture in Ghana's history, the Electoral Commission would be headed by a public servant keenly aware of the fact that the focus of his peers around the world, would be on him during Ghana's presidential and parliamentary elections.

Dr. Afari Djan is a principled gentleman who treasures his well-deserved international reputation. He would never have been party to any electoral fraud. That is why he is so emphatic that claims of electoral fraud made by the New Patriotic Party are "false".

In the same vein, every judge sitting on the Supreme Court panel selected to sit on the case the New Patriotic Party says it is bringing to prove the presidential election was rigged, will likewise be keenly aware that their peers in Commonwealth democracies such as the United Kingdom; Canada; Australia; India; South Africa and Botswana for example, will be taking a keen interest in how they proceed.

Against that backdrop, one doubts very much that those eminent and learned judges, will deliver a judgement other than that which their impartial and incorruptible peers in say the United Kingdom or Botswana would, in similar circumstances: all things being equal, so to speak.

This time round too, falsehood will not win power through the backdoor for the New Patriotic Party, with the blessings of the Ghanaian judiciary. The Supreme Court of Ghana will not see electoral fraud where non has actually taken place.

Tel: 027 745 3109.

Email: peakofi.thompson@gmail.com.