NPP behaving as if there’s nothing at stake – Ayine

A spokesperson of John Dramani Mahama’s legal team, Dr. Dominic Ayine has taken a swipe at the governing New Patriotic Party accusing its spokespersons of behaving as if there is nothing at stake in the Election Petition case currently before the Supreme Court.

He complained that the posturing of both the 1st Respondent and the 2nd Respondent over the request to have the original electoral documents scrutinized smacks of calculated machinations that will only leave serious dents on the country’s growing constitutional democracy.

“We are not allowed calling for the material evidence on which the declaration was made, and I think that is a bit frightening in terms of a fledgling democracy such as Ghana’s. This is a very serious matter and our friends in the NPP are behaving as if there is nothing at stake. There is everything at stake when it comes to this matter. The EC Chair conducted herself in an unconstitutional and unlawful manner, and we want the Supreme Court to so declare”, he told Bernard Avle on The Point of View.

Dr. Ayine’s concerns follow the Supreme Court’s unanimous dismissal of Mahama’s application to inspect all the original constituency presidential election result collation forms for all constituencies, constituency presidential election results summary sheet, regional presidential election summary sheets for all regions, and the declaration of the presidential results form.

The Justices in their ruling said they found the motion misconceived because the petitioner had already in his possession, carbonated copies of the documents in question.

But Dr. Ayine explained that an inspection of the document is necessary for the petitioner to be able to determine whether the figures that the EC used for the declaration match his own.

For him, it is extremely erroneous if they are being asked to provide their own figures to back issues they’ve raised against the Electoral Commission.

“What does the EC have to hide if they are acting in accordance with their motto of transparency, fairness, and integrity? In any decent democracy, they would have carried all their documents to the Supreme Court for proof of their point”, he quizzed.

Sparring further, the former deputy Attorney General discredited assertions that the request lacked legal merits and that the petitioner was not entitled to have the application granted adding that they have a superior case in court because the EC Chairperson, Jean Adukwei Mensa erred constitutionally.

“If you reduce our case to the declaration of whether the 50 percent plus one vote was crossed, then you are missing an important aspect of the case which is the constitutionality of the declaration. Ghanaians should begin to think about the performance of public duties”.

“The EC chairperson declared the President-elect of the country based on wrong figures and subsequently corrected those figures single-handedly without recourse to the procedures outlined by law. If that is allowed to happen, it will be a disaster for our constitutional democracy”, Dr. Ayine stated.