Lawyers of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and the Electoral Commission (EC) have described the presidential election petition filed by 2020 National Democratic Congress (NDC) flagbearer as incompetent and frivolous.
Accordingly, the lawyers for the 2nd and 1st respondents respectively, have in separate responses, served notice they would be raising preliminary objection to urge the Supreme Court to dismiss the petition in limine (at the start).
Representing the President, the law firm co-founded by him; Akufo-Addo, Prempeh, and Co, in a 12-paged response described the petition as “incompetent, frivolous and vexatious, discloses no reasonable cause of action, and does not meet the threshold for invoking the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court and 2nd Respondent hereby serves notice of his intention to raise a preliminary objection”.
President Akufo-Addo’s lawyers averred that the petition was “merely conjectural and borne out of unfounded imagination”.
NDC presidential candidate Mr Mahama is asking the Apex Court to annul the 2020 election results that saw Akufo-Addo declared president.
He argued that President Akufo-Addo benefitted from arithmetic errors and vote padding.
However, the 2nd Respondent averred that the “instant action is a ruse and a face-saving gimmick by Petitioner, after Petitioner and many senior members of his NDC party had prematurely claimed outright victory in the election, only to be badly exposed by results of 1st Respondent corroborated by all media houses of note in this country as well as many independent local and international observers”.
According to the 2nd Respondent, the Petitioner’s conduct and that of other leading members of the NDC in proclaiming outright victory with an alleged percentage of over 51 %, only to now come to the highest court of the land and pray for “a second election with Petitioner and 1st Respondent as the candidates”, was contrived to deceive the people of Ghana, and shows that from the outset, the Petitioner and his party leaders knew that they had lost the presidential election.
Consequently, the “2nd Respondent relies on the foregoing to state that the Petition is incompetent, frivolous and vexatious, discloses no reasonable cause of action, and does not meet the threshold for invoking the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court and 2nd Respondent hereby serves notice of his intention to raise a preliminary objection”.
Notice to raise preliminary objection
The 2nd Respondent stated that on the strength of the foregoing, he has served notice of his intention to raise a preliminary abjection to the Petition on the following grounds:
i. that the grounds upon which the Petition is based do not meet the requirement imposed on a petitioner under article 64 (1) of the 1992 Constitution.
ii. that the reliefs claimed by Petitioner, particularly reliefs (b), (c), (d) and (f). which purport to declare as unconstitutional the declaration of the results of the presidential election by 1st Respondent and consequently claim an order for annulment of the Declaration of President-Elect Instrument, 2020 (C I 135), arc not supported by facts pleaded in the Petition;
iii. that paragraphs 6 through to 30 of the Petition recount allegations of mathematical errors contained in parts of the declaration made by Chairman of the 1st Respondent, and that at law. a challenge of the declaration of results of an election does not amount to an attack on the validity of an election;
iv. that Petitioner has not, in the Petition, challenged the validity of the elections conducted throughout the 38,622 polling stations and 311 special voting centres in the country, and has therefore not challenged the lawfulness of the election;
v. that even though Petitioner claims a relief for “a second election with Petitioner and 1st Respondent as the candidates’ he fails to indicate the number of valid votes (or percentage thereof) that he should have obtained in the election as well as the number of votes (or percentage thereof) that 2nd Respondent should have obtained in the election, to support such a relief;
vi. that Petitioner’s allegation of ‘vote padding’, assuming same to be valid, put in issue a meagre 5662 votes, which cannot affect the outcome of the election; and
vii. that in the circumstances, the Petition is incompetent, frivolous and vexatious, and discloses no reasonable cause of action in terms of article 64(1) of the Constitution.
Techiman South results
Mr. Mahama in his petition argued that if all votes from Techiman South Constituency were added to his votes, the NPP’s Akufo-Addo will get less than 50% plus 1 of the valid votes cast.
However, the President’s lawyers responded that results or votes from Techiman South were known to Mr. Mahama at the time of filing his petition.
These votes, they pointed out, if credited to each candidate will reveal that President Akufo-Addo duly obtained more than 50% of the votes cast.
