Martin Adjei-Mensah Korsah
The Techiman High Court has dismissed an election petition filed against the election of Martin Adjei-Mensah Korsah as the Member of Parliament for Techiman South in the Bono East Region.
The court dismissed the challenge filed by Christopher Beyere Baasongti, the National Democratic Congress (NDC)’s parliamentary candidate for the 2024 election, on ground that the petitioner failed to attach security for cost to his petition as demanded by law.
The NDC candidate filed the parliamentary election petition on January 27, 2025, following the official gazetting of the election results on January 7, 2025, by the Electoral Commission (EC).
Martin Adjei-Mensah Korsah on January 31, 2025, through his lawyer, Gary Nimako Marfo, filed a motion before the court challenging the validity of the election petition and urged the court to dismiss it.
He argued that between the time of publication of the gazette notification by the EC and the filing of the petition, the petitioner failed to give security for cost because no application was brought for determination of how much would be payable as security for cost within the stipulated 21 days as provided for by law.
He contended in his affidavit in support of the motion that, where statutes have provided a procedure, it is only that procedure that can be followed, and nothing else.
The motion further contended that “the petitioner’s failure to give security for cost within the said 21 days of the publication of the gazette notification renders the Election Petition filed on 27th January, 2025 invalid and same ought to be set aside by this Honourable Court.”
The Techiman High Court, in its decision, agreed with Mr. Adjei-Mensah Korsah and dismissed the petition for failing to attach the security for cost.
Techiman South was one of the four constituencies where a High Court in Accra ordered the re-collation of results due to irregularities in the earlier results declared.
The NDC’s candidate had been declared winner after the collation of just 135 out of the 282 polling stations in the constituency.
The High Court presided over by Justice Baah Forson Agyapong, in his ruling on the Techiman South situation, ordered the EC to re-collate the result to include the outstanding 147 polling stations before declaring the final result.
After the re-collation on January 5, 2025, Mr. Adjei-Mensah Korsah was declared the winner, securing 46,663 votes, as against the 43,429 polled by the NDC candidate, Christopher Bayere Baasongti.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak