A private legal practitioner, Mr Kwame Gyan, has argued that the presidential election petition filed by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) 2020 flagbearer, Mr John Dramani Mahama was purely based on arithmetic errors and not based on law.
According to him, the petitioner failed to cite violation of any of the electoral laws in his petition to the Supreme Court.
Mr Mahama’s petition, he averred, was centred on mathematical errors, which he reckoned were committed by the Electoral Commission (EC) in the computation of the results from the various polling stations.
“This petition is purely arithmetic. It’s like adding numbers. It is not law but arithmetic. The NPP petition was about whether specific electoral laws have been violated but this one is about whether someone has made basic arithmetic errors. One is law and the other is mathematics.
“I have read the petition and I remember the 2012 petition. This one is not really complicated. In the NPP petition for 2012, they set out infractions and over-voting and voting without biometric verification. They listed different infractions and backed it with law”, Lawyer Gyan told Accra-based Angel FM.
He pointed out that unlike the 2012 election petition where the NPP highlighted these specific breaches, the 2020 election petition is devoid of same.
Lawyer Gyan noted that Mr Mahama’s petition is a simple issue that will be resolved with ease by the Supreme Court Justices.
The NDC presidential candidate filed the petition on December 30, 2020, praying the Supreme Court to quash the declaration by EC Chairperson Jean Mensa who is the Returning Officer of the Presidential Elections.
Mrs Mensa declared Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo as winner of the December 7 polls.
However, Mr Mahama, in his petition prayed the court to order a re-run of the election as neither him nor President Akufo-Addo obtained more 50 percent of the valid votes cast as required by Article 63 of the 1992 Constitution.
The hearing of the petition commenced on January 14, 2021.
