Ghana’s Electoral Commission has been advised to immediately give all the presidential candidates it disqualified from this year’s elections the chance to correct errors on their nomination forms.
According to Financial analyst, Sydney Casely-Hayford, such a move will prevent all disgruntled candidates seeking to contest in the race from fighting the commission in court.
Casely-Hayford gave the advice on The Big Issue on Saturday while commenting on the Progressive People’s Party’s victory against the EC in court.
“I expect that this particular case would result in all the other people who were disqualified to go back now either as a block or single items…if they don’t and they take the combative stand and expect that every single individual whom they disqualified is now going to go back and challenge them in court. Then all you will get is this turmoil and it will just heighten tensions in the country and it is not necessary,” he added.
The EC had disqualified the flagbearer of the PPP and 12 others from the race for not filing their nomination forms properly.
In the case of the PPP, the EC said it had same person subscribed to Nduom’s candidature at two different places hence the disqualification; but Nduom sued the EC to court and won the case.
The court in its ruling on Friday, October 28, 2016 ordered the EC to allow Dr. Nduom to correct the errors on his nomination forms.
Meanwhile Casely-Hayford said the EC should take a cue from Nduom’s victory and sit up.
“If the EC had a mind to calm waters and if it really figured out that it wanted to represent the people of this country properly then it would by now craft a statement that in the light of the judge’s decision on Paa Kwesi Nduom we have looked at how the event went and we have decided to allow the other participants to come and correct what they did wrong.”
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