The Supreme Court has refused to grant an application for former President John Dramani Mahama to reopen his case in order to subpoena the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC), Mrs Jean Mensa, to testify in the 2020 presidential election petition.
Lawyers for petitioner, Mr Mahama, had filed the application to enable him reopen his case, which he had closed on his own volition, to now subpoena Mrs Mensa to enter the witness box as a “hostile” or “adversary” witness.
However, in a unanimous ruling yesterday, the seven-member panel of the apex court hearing the petition held that the petitioner failed to provide any legal basis to justify his attempt to reopen the case.
Consequently, it held that it could not exercise its discretion in favour of the petitioner.
The highest court of the land emphasised that the petitioner failed to tell the court the sort of evidence he needed from Mrs Mensa and how that evidence would help in the determination of the petition.
“As we’ve already indicated in this ruling supra, the petitioner in this application has not given us an inkling of the new or fresh evidence that he wants to bring to the fore through the Chairperson of the first respondent and how that evidence could assist the court to do justice in the matters under consideration in this petition, neither has he disclosed how that evidence would advance the course of his petition.
“For the above-stated reasons, we find no merit whatsoever in the petitioner’s application to reopen his case for the sole purpose of compelling his adversary’s intended witness to testify through a subpoena without indicating the sort of evidence he intends to solicit from the said witness and how that evidence is going to help the court in resolving the dispute before us. We accordingly refuse the application and proceed without any hesitation to dismiss him”, the apex court stated in the ruling read by Chief Justice Kwasi Anin Yeboah.
It also described as untenable, the argument by lawyers for the petitioner that Mrs Mensa must testify in order to account to the people of Ghana her stewardship during the December 2020 elections.
The apex court pointed out that Mrs Mensa was not on trial before the court for her to testify to vindicate herself to anybody.
Another review
Just after the ruling, lead counsel for petitioner, Mr Tsatsu Tsikata, informed the court that his client had filed a review of the court’s ruling on February 11, 2021, which upheld that Mrs Mensa cannot be compelled to testify in the case.
This will be the third review application by the petitioner after he lost each of the first two by 9-0.
Mr Tsikata also told the court that his client was going to file an application for stay of proceedings pending the determination of the review application.
Notwithstanding this, the Supreme Court reiterated that its orders for parties to file their closing addresses by close of day Wednesday 17, 2021, still stands.
Mahama’s claims
Mr Mahama who stood on the ticket of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the 2020 presidential election filed the petition, disputing the election results.
He is praying the apex court to order a re-run between him and President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) who was declared the winner of the polls.
Mr Mahama is now claiming no candidate won the election after he and his party bigwigs told Ghanaians, particularly NDC supporters at several news conferences that he won the 2020 polls.
This claim led to NDC supporters demonstrating violently on the streets with burning of car tyres and destruction of property.
