A member of the legal team of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Baba Jamal, has expressed disappointment at the Supreme Court’s dismissal of interrogatories by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) flagbearer, John Mahama.
Ex-President Mahama sought to ask the Electoral Commission to answer about twelve legal questions to clarify matters of fact and help to determine in advance what facts will be presented in the 2020 election petition trial.
However, the court dismissed the motion as it stated that “relevance of interlocutory by the petitioner has not been established”.
Reacting to this happening in court, Baba Jamal explained that if the court had allowed the list of questions, the petition process would have been expedited.
He told Sefa Danquah on the ‘Epa Hoa Daben’ show: “In 2013, the court granted to Nana Addo the opportunity for interrogatories. The court explained that once it can help with the quickening of the case, they will allow it. At that time the justices were nine. This time the justices are seven but they still disagreed with us. So what was accepted in 2013, is now being quashed today. With the new law, the court wants to expedite the process, and we believe that this could have fastened the process.
All the twelve questions were connected to the issue in court and it would have fastened the process. For example, when the EC made its declaration on the 9th, it made corrections on the 10th. At what time did she notice that there was a mistake for her to make the changes on the 10th? The court did not allow us to ask this question.
We also wanted to ask if there were agents present when the corrections were being made. All this would have brought clarity to the matter”.
Background
The Supreme Court has dismissed interrogatories allegations by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) flagbearer, John Mahama asking the Electoral Commission to answer some legal questions to clarify matters of fact and help to determine in advance what facts will be presented in the 2020 election petition trial.
The facts relate to Jean Mensa’s declaration of election polls results on December 9.
Some of the questions Mahama’s lawyers is seeking the EC to answer were;
- Whether NCA facilitated the transmission of results to the EC Headquarters.
- Practice in a previous presidential election involving the collation figures
- Was this practice followed?
- How were results transferred from constituency collation centers to regional collation centers?
- If the December 7 election was the first time EC introduced regional collation centers as an intermediary between constituency collation centers and EC head
- How did the EC and returning officer retaliate there say errors in the declaration?
- When did Mrs. Jean Mensa realize there were errors in the December 9 declaration?
- Did the EC confer with agents before making the purported correction?
- Did EC gave FORM 13 to all the agents of the presidential candidates?
