Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings at the court yesterday
An Accra High Court yesterday dismissed the application for judicial review and enforcement of fundamental human rights filed against the Electoral Commission (EC) by former first lady Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings.
The applicant, who is also the presidential candidate of the National Democratic Party (NDP), through her lawyer, Ace Annan Ankomah, had sued the EC following her disqualification from the 2016 presidential election.
She is among 12 others disqualified by the EC on the basis of some purported irregularities on the face of their nomination forms for the December 7 election.
So far, Mrs. Rawlings is the third among the disqualified presidential hopefuls to dash to the court for redress, after Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom and Hassan Ayariga, Presidential aspirants of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) and the All Peoples Congress (APC) respectively.
At the last hearing, lawyer of the EC, Thaddeus Sory, argued that the NDP’s application lacked merit and was not properly before the court; but Ace Ankomah disagreed.
Ruling
However, the court, presided over by Justice George K. Koomson, dismissed the case, stressing that it was incompetent and awarded GH¢10,000 cost against Nana Konadu.
The judge noted that when a case is improperly laid before the court, it denies it the power to invoke its jurisdiction.
The court held that CI 94 does not override Article 33 of the Constitution and that every type of case has a different mode applied.
Justice Koomson said on matters of processes, there could be no compromise.
The court nonetheless stated that the applicant could not also wait until the elections were held before she could raise concerns about the violation of her fundamental human rights, adding that “that will be absurd.”
The judge also dismissed the case by the EC over whether or not the applicant ought to have initiated the action by a writ or a petition.
Meanwhile, the NDP candidate has re-filed her suit against the Electoral Commission at the Human Rights Division of the High Court, which will be heard on Tuesday, November 1, 2016.
Nana Konadu, who added the Attorney General to the case, is seeking an “interlocutory injunction prohibiting and retraining” the EC and its agents from going ahead with the balloting on presidential candidates for positions on the ballot paper until the court settles the matter.
Explaining the NDP’s disqualification, the EC underscored that “the Commission is unable to accept Mrs. Rawlings’ nomination because the number of subscribers to her forms did not meet the requirements of Regulation 7 (2) (b) of CI 94.”
It added that “one subscriber on page 89 of her nomination forms is not a validly registered voter, and illegally registered twice and so is on the Exclusion List of multiple voters. Details are Salifu Abdulai. District: Nanumba South, Voter ID No: 6617004814 (28.3.2012), Voter ID No: 2126900022 (04.8.2014).”
By Jeffrey De-Graft Johnson