The Presidential Candidate of the People’s National Convention (PNC), Dr Edward Nasigre Mahama, has gone to the Human Rights Division of the High Court to seek an order directed at the Electoral Commission (EC) to accept his nomination forms to enable him to run for the December 7, 2016 presidential election.
Dr Mahama is seeking a declaration that the decision of the EC and its chairperson to reject his nomination forms without giving him an opportunity to be heard constituted a patent breach of his rights to natural justice as enshrined in Articles 33 (5) and 23 of the 1992 Constitution.
The application for the enforcement of his fundamental human rights, which was filed on his behalf by Dr Raymond Atuguba, a legal practitioner, is seeking an order restraining the respondents from printing the presidential ballot papers or carrying on with the December 7, 2016 presidential election.
Dr Mahama is seeking a further order restraining the respondents from printing the presidential ballot papers or to carry on with the December 7, 2016 presidential election without him being declared the duly nominated candidate of the PNC and allowed to contest the poll.
Other reliefs
He is seeking another declaration that the decision of the respondents to disqualify him from contesting the 2016 presidential election infringes on his right to the protection of the law as enshrined in Articles 12(1) and (2), 34(1), 35(4), 37(2)(b), 40(c) and (d), 41(b) and (d), 55(1), (2) and (3), 296 of the 1992 Constitution and the Public Elections Regulations, 2016 (C. I. 94).
A further declaration that applicants’ right to “Administrative Justice”, enshrined under Article 23 of the 1992 Constitution, to have Administrative Bodies and Administrative Officials, such as the respondents, act “fairly and reasonably” and “comply with the requirements imposed on them by law,” have been grievously injured in their various unlawful, wrongful, unfair, unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious actions deposed to in the accompanying affidavit and relating to the 2016 public presidential elections is also being sought.
The applicant wants the court to declare that the wrongful rejection of the nomination forms of Dr Mahama has severely restricted the applicant’s constitutional right to “participate in political activities” as enshrined in Article 21 (3) of the 1992 Constitution.
Dr Mahama is arguing that his right to work, as enshrined in Article 24 of the 1992 Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic and Social Rights, has been violated by the respondents in that their unlawful conduct had thus effectively crushed his endeavour to work as a politician in Ghana.
A declaration that the conduct of the respondents, in allowing minor errors in the application documentation of other candidates for the 2016 public presidential and parliamentary elections to pass, while using similar errors on his nomination forms to disqualify him infringed on and violated his right to equal treatment under the law and freedom from discrimination, enshrined in Article 17 of the 1992 Constitution.
Disqualification
Dr Mahama is the fifth presidential aspirant to legally challenge the EC’s decision to disqualify 12 aspirants from contesting on December 7, 2016.
Background
The EC, on Monday, October 10, 2016, disqualified 12 presidential aspirants from contesting the December 7, 2016 election for various reasons ranging from forgery and impersonation to perjury.
Three days later, it forwarded a complaint against the subscribers for eight aspirants to the CID for investigations.
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