The Progressive People’s Party has cited the Electoral Commission Chairperson for contempt after it held onto the party’s filing fee last week despite an application for injunction to this.
Although the party was successful in filing the suit, it could not locate the EC Chairperson, Charlotte Osei to serve her with the writ. The party says the Commissioner is at large.
The EC Chair ‘seized’ the presidential filing fee offered her by the PPP’s National Chairman Nii Allotey Brew-Hammond last week.
Mrs Osei said she took the money because she thought the party had withdrawn its suit challenging the setting of the fee.
She had earlier rejected the filing fee of the Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party (PPP) citing the PPP’s court case challenging the GHC50,000 and GHC10,000 presidential and parliamentary filing fees respectively.
Answering a question about why the party offered the money to the EC despite the pending suit at the Accra High Court, Dr Brew-Hammond explained they baited the Chair and succeeded in getting her.
He said they had expected the Commissioner to reject the money as he did in the case of the NPP leader but was scandalized when she took their money.
“Our suit injuncted the Electoral Commission from accepting and receiving; they have accepted and received and I think that is where we have to [look at our options],” he had told Joy News.
The contempt suit is the latest twist in PPP’s determination to restrain the EC from what it calls the “arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable” setting of presidential and parliamentary filing fee.
The party argues its decision will help instill sanity in Ghana’s political landscape. It wants the EC to do the right thing in the face of the law.
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