The chicken is gradually coming home to roost as former President John Dramani Mahama says his main purpose of filing 2020 elections petition was to two satisfy two main reasons contrary to the general believe that it was to challenge the results declared by chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC) Jean A. Mensa.
The two main reasons of going to the Supreme Court with the petition, according to Mr. Mahama were, to calm the atmosphere which he claimed was charged and to also test the legal right of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
Mr Mahama was of the view that several anomalies occurred in the elections which affected the results, a situation he claimed resulted in anger among supporters of the NDC.
In order to calm them, he subsequently decided to rely on the provisions of the 1992 constitution by going to the apex court to resolve the matter.
The former President addressing the United States Chapter of the NDC at the Bentley University on Sunday March 27, 2022 stated that “We have all done elections before and at the printing press, all the political parties are supposed to send agents to the printing press. We sit there from the time they start printing until we finish. When they finish, we all tally how many ballots they were asked to print, we all look at the numbers and everything and if we are satisfied then all the agents sign a certificate of completion to say that we are satisfied, that it tallies with the number you were asked to print.
“And so, we did that at the printing press and left. But one of our agents had to go back, he was going to look for something, he had left his laptop bag and so he was going to look for it, only for him to see millions of ballot papers being printed.
“When he asked why they were printing extra ballot papers, they said the EC had asked them to print. Out of frustration, they said in case there was a second round. But seven people will not go for second round, ballot papers for a second round is only for two people, the top two. No proper explanation on why those ballot papers were printed, were given.
“Some of the people were seen later carrying ballot papers and we reported them to the police. Up till date, nobody has been charged or prosecuted for carrying those extra ballot papers.
“These are the things that happened in the elections and so we thought the elections weren’t free and fair and so we went to the Supreme Court. One, to test our legal right and then secondly, to also calm the atmosphere.
“The atmosphere was quite charged, a few of our people took to the streets, there was a threat of violence, and we didn’t want to go down that path and so it was better to use what the constitution has given us. Once we filed the suit I noticed that it calmed everybody and of course we went and got 7:0 on every issue that we raised.”
However, the seven-member panel of the Supreme Court by a unanimous decision threw out the petition on March 4, 2021 on the grounds that it defeat the purpose of coming to court.
By Vincent Kubi