Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Wednesday, November 09, 2016
The Ghana Center
for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) has expressed dismay at the alleged
discovery of new errors on the nomination forms of the disqualified
presidential aspirants after the Supreme Court had ordered the commission to cause
the correction of the known errors and admit them into the presidential
election contest.
Equally, the Peace Council is
also urging the commission, chaired by Charlotte Osei,
to desist from taking action that would be interpreted as a deliberate attempt
to take some persons off the presidential ballot paper.
A statement
released in Accra yesterday by CDD-Ghana described the Supreme Court’s order to
allow all disqualified presidential aspirants to correct the errors on their
forms and re-submit them as ‘forward-looking and unprecedented,’ adding, “In our view, the claim of new errors after
the Supreme Court ruling is manifestly unfair and a breach of administrative
justice.”
CDD-Ghana says it
finds the new twist in which the EC asked the aspirants to correct the new
errors, in addition to the earlier ones, within the stipulated time frame
“deeply troubling” because “it was the EC that took the matter to the Supreme
Court, ostensibly to bring finality to the many suits at the courts challenging
its decision to disqualify a number of presidential aspirants.”
According to the
centre, it was the EC that “implored the Supreme Court to invoke its
supervisory jurisdiction in order to avert a constitutional crisis, taking into
account the time-sensitive nature of the 2016 electoral timetable.” It is
difficult to comprehend the EC’s decision to introduce new issues that have the
potential to instigate new legal suits, which the Supreme Court in its lucid
ruling and extraordinary consequential orders, had sought to abate - after the
Court has heeded to the EC’s pleadings and issued pragmatic orders for
management of the process.”
The CDD underscored,
“The EC detailed reasons for disqualifying the thirteen presidential aspirants
on 10th October, 2016.It was for these reasons that the aspirants went to court
and obtained a favourable outcome. Therefore, all presidential aspirants should
have a legitimate expectation that they will be asked to correct the mistakes
that were publicly identified by the EC as reasons for their disqualification,
anything more than that is an improper use of discretionary power.”
It called on the
EC “to pull back from the brink of electoral and potential constitutional
chaos, as well as collapse of our nascent democratic experiment, and to allow
the disqualified aspirants to correct the errors that formed the basis of their
earlier disqualification, as ordered by the Supreme Court.”
In the case of the
Peace Council, its chairman, Most Rev. Prof. Emmanuel
Asante said, “I believe that the ruling of the Supreme Court should bring
finality, especially in respect of the presidential candidates who were
disqualified because they have been given the opportunity to resubmit.”
He said on Joy FM that it was important for the EC
to desist from putting any more impediments in the way of the candidates and pleaded
with the commission to strive to ensure that the spirit of the ruling was
carried out without fear or favour.
“My advice first of
all to the Electoral Commission (EC) is very simple. They have the
responsibility to ensure that the ground is leveled,” he said.
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