Professor Margaret Kweku files witnesss statement in SALL Case

In compliance with the orders of the High Court in Ho on May 21, 2024, Professor Margaret Kweku, a Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Health and Allied Sciences in Ho and the 1st Petitioner in the Election Petition against Hon. Peter Amewu, filed a witness statement on behalf of the four other Petitioners and herself on Thursday, May 30, 2024.

As of the close of business on Friday, May 31, 2024, the deadline given by the court, neither the Electoral Commission nor Hon. Peter Amewu had filed a witness statement.

In her witness statement, Professor Kweku states that the Hohoe constituency was specified by the Electoral Commission in the Public Elections Regulations Constitutional Instrument Number 95 of 2016 (hereinafter C.I. 95) as one of the 275 constituencies established by the Commission for the conduct of public elections in Ghana.

The constituency included the Santrokofi, Akpafu, Lolobi, and Likpe traditional areas. All of this, according to her, is admitted in the Answers to the Petition filed by the Electoral Commission and Hon. Peter Amewu.

C.I. 95 was never validly revoked, revised, repealed, or otherwise amended and should have been used for the Parliamentary elections that were held on December 7, 2020, to allow every registered voter in the constituency to exercise the right to vote as provided for in Article 42 of the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana. However, registered voters in the SALL Traditional Areas, numbering over seventeen thousand (17,000), were denied a vote by a press statement which the Electoral Commission released to the public in the evening of December 6, 2020, just a few hours before the 2020 general election, stating that voters in the SALL area could only vote in the Presidential election but not in the Parliamentary elections.

This decision, which violated the constitutional responsibilities of the Electoral Commission, clearly affected the outcome of the election since Hon. Peter Amewu was reported to have received 26,952 votes as against 21,821 for Professor Margaret Kweku.

The witness statement goes on to indicate that in the Answers filed by the Respondents to the Petition, while admitting C.I. 95 as having established the Hohoe constituency as one of 275 constituencies in 2016, they claimed that C.I. 95 had been amended by C.I. 128. However, the purported amendment of C.I. 95 by C.I. 128 was a violation of Article 47(5) of the 1992 Constitution, which provides that: “The Electoral Commission shall review the division of Ghana into constituencies at intervals of not less than seven years, or within twelve months after the publication of the enumeration figures after the holding of a census of the population of Ghana, whichever is earlier, and may, as a result, alter the constituencies.”

At the time of the purported enactment of C.I. 128, seven years had not elapsed since the establishment of the Hohoe Constituency in C.I. 95, nor had there been “twelve months after the publication of the enumeration figures after the holding of a census of the population of Ghana” to trigger a review by the Electoral Commission of the Hohoe Constituency. The purported alteration by the Commission of the boundaries of the existing Hohoe constituency as established in C.I. 95 was, thus, unconstitutional and invalid.

Furthermore, since the Electoral Commission has no power to change regional boundaries and its power to change constituency boundaries is limited by the Constitution, its C.I. 128 could not lawfully place “the four communities namely Santrokofi, Akpafu, Lolobi, and Likpe under the Buem Constituency in the Jasikan District of the Oti Region” for the December 7, 2020, elections, as had been claimed in the Answers to the Election Petition filed by the Electoral Commission and Hon. Peter Amewu.

No Guan District had been created at the time of the December 7, 2020, elections and the Electoral Commission had no lawful basis to prevent voters in the SALL Traditional Areas from voting in their existing constituency.

The fact that Santrokofi, Akpafu, Lolobi, and Likpe were part of the Hohoe Municipality under the Local Government (Hohoe Municipal Assembly) (Establishment) Instrument 2012, L.I. 2151 was admitted by the Electoral Commission in its response to a Request to Admit Facts filed by Counsel for the Petitioners, according to the witness statement. Even if C.I. 128 had been validly enacted, Article 47(6) of the 1992 Constitution makes it clear that “Where the boundaries of a constituency established under this article are altered as a result of a review, the alteration shall come into effect upon the next dissolution of Parliament.” The next dissolution of Parliament, by virtue of Article 113(1) of the 1992 Constitution, would not come into effect until January 6, 2021.

The witness statement also highlights violations by the Electoral Commission of constitutional provisions as well as the Local Governance Act, 2016, Act 936. The conduct of the Commission, according to the witness statement, has denied registered voters in the SALL traditional areas democratic participation in the nation and their right to equality before the law under Article 17 of the Constitution. Such discrimination on account of place of origin is not allowed under the Constitution, according to the witness statement.

The Commission knew or ought to have known that it had not validly created a new constituency in which the registered voters in the SALL area could vote for a Member of Parliament, and, therefore, that not allowing them to vote in the Hohoe constituency meant they would have no representation in the 8th Parliament of the 4th Republic whose term began on January 7, 2021.

The election of Hon. Peter Amewu as Member of Parliament for the Hohoe Constituency in the 8th Parliament of the 4th Republic cannot stand when some voters in the Constituency were excluded from voting on December 7, 2020, and denied their constitutional and fundamental human right to vote.

The Petitioners are, therefore, seeking to have the court set aside the purported election of Hon. Peter Amewu and order the Electoral Commission to conduct a Parliamentary election for the Hohoe constituency in which all duly registered voters in the said constituency as established by C.I. 95 are able to vote for the Parliamentary candidate of their choice.

On May 30, 2024, the Electoral Commission complied with an order of the court to file authentic copies of the Constitutional Instrument 119 of 2019 (the District Electoral Areas and Designation of Units Regulations) and Constitutional Instrument 128 of 2020 (the Representation of People (Parliamentary Constituencies) Instrument), as well as the list of registered voters in the SALL Traditional Areas.

The Commission also filed a Notice of Change of Solicitor, appointing Justin Amenuvor, Esq. in place of Sekyi-Boampong, Esq.

Three trial dates - June 11, 20, and 21, 2024 – have been set for trial. The court also set June 3, 2024, for a case management conference.