Nii Ayikoi Otoo, lawyer for the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) has expressed optimism in the High Court hearing the case of the disqualification of the party’s flagbearer, Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom, from the December 2016 elections.
Nonetheless, he said the party would resort to the Supreme Court should Friday’s ruling go against their wishes.
Speaking to journalists after Tuesday’s hearing, Nii Ayikoi Otoo said, per CI 94, it was clear that the Electoral Commission (EC) erred in disqualifying Dr Nduom and has so far failed to offer any good explanation for his disqualification.
He explained that it was not for nothing that the law states that aspirants should be given ample time to amend and alter mistakes on their nomination forms if any.
“The law provides that when I present my forms look through and if you find anything wrong, give me an opportunity to correct and if I fail to correct then you do the endorsement, give it to the EC and within seven days let the EC make a decision.
“I bring my forms to you on the 30th. You accept the forms. You told me nothing, go, you’ll hear from me. Then on the 10th the only hearing is that I have been disqualified. Have you acted according to the law? Did you give me the opportunity to do the corrections?” he quipped.
Nii Ayikoi Otoo added that, “If parliament wanted everybody who commits an error to be disqualified, (it) would have said so. It wouldn’t say that give the person opportunity to go and amend; not only amend but alter. What do you understand by those two powerful words? I can change anything on the forms. So they failed clearly and they have not offered any good explanation.
“So having misbehaved, she cannot benefit from her wrong doing… Did she act in a rational manner? Was she fair? These are the issues. She breached all the laws which also amount to illegality. The errors are all there, apparent on the face of CI 94…Everybody has understood this position and I don’t expect the judge to go any other way,” he observed.
Dr Nduom was disqualified from contesting in the December elections because he failed to provide the required number of subscribers for nomination.
According to the EC, one Richard Aseda who subscribed to Dr Nduom’s nomination did double endorsement, first in the Central Region and then in the Volta Region.
Following his disqualification, Dr Nduom filed an application for judicial review at the High Court, praying the court to quash the EC’s decision to disqualify him and a further order directed at the Chairperson of the EC, Mrs Charlotte Osei, to grant him “the opportunity to amend and alter the one anomaly” found in his nomination papers, as well as accept his nomination forms as amended and or altered to enable him to contest the elections.
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