Patrick Yaw Boamah, Baba Sadiq
The Supreme Court (SC) has given the National Democratic Congress (NDC) seven (7) days within which to file a response to certain matters raised in defence to a case seeking to quash the decision of a High Court which called for re-collation of parliamentary results in Tema Central, Ablekuma North, Okaikwei Central, and Techiman South constituencies.
This was after the court presided over by a single judge, Justice Yaw Darko Asare, granted an application for extension of time filed by the party to respond to the matters raised by the Electoral Commission (EC) in its defence.
The court has also given the EC and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) candidates seven (7) days after service, within which to reply to issues raised by the NDC, if they wish to.
A High Court in Accra on January 5, 2025, ordered the Electoral Commission to complete the collation of parliamentary results in four (4) constituencies – Tema Central, Ablekuma North, Okaikwei Central, and Techiman South by January 6, 2025.
The court, presided over by Justice Baah Forson Agyapong, also directed the Inspector General of Police to provide adequate and armed security during the collation exercises in the disputed constituencies.
This followed a grant of an application for mandamus filed by the NPP candidates in the affected constituencies to compel the EC to complete the collation processes in the four disputed constituencies which were declared in favour of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) candidates, leading to confusions and misunderstandings.
Three candidates from the NPP – Patrick Yaw Boamah, Okaikwei Central; Charles Forson, Tema Central and Martin Adjei-Korsah, Techiman South, have been declared MPs-elect following the court-mandated collation of results, while the re-collation process for Ablekuma North has been put on hold again.
The trial judge’s decision for a completion of the collation processes was anchored on the principles guiding the grant of a mandamus application rather than an election petition.
In the case of Tema Central, Justice Agyapong in his ruling held that the EC collated 148 out of 150 polling station results, and there is evidence that the declaration was done by a person who is not the Returning Officer for the constituency.
Justice Agyapong, in his ruling on Okaikwei Central, held that the EC failed to perform its public duty by declaring results from all the 141 polling stations and instead declared the NDC’s Baba Sadiq as the winner based on 110 out of 141 polling stations.
For Techiman South, the court said the EC was found to have declared results based on only 135 out of 282 polling stations thus, failing to carry out its public duty.
In the case of Ablekuma North, Justice Agyapong found that the EC’s decision to declare results based on 219 out of the total 281 polling stations was incomplete, as it left out 62 polling station results which were not collated.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak