The Supreme Court has ruled against a request by the 2020 Presidential Election Petitioner to inspect some documents of the Electoral Commissioner relied upon to declare the 7th December Presidential Elections.
In its Wednesday’s ruling, the seven-member panel said the petitioner has not demonstrated to the court that he does not already have copies of the documents, he was seeking in court.
Even worse, the decision read by chief Justice Anin Yeboah said the petitioner failed to adduced fresh evidence to support why being given the originals of the said documents in contention were relevant to the case before the court.
The Former President John Dramani Mahama is currently in court challenging the outcome of January 7, 2020, Presidential Elections results as declared by the Electoral Commission.
He contends that neither him nor President Akufo-Addo, who was declared the winner in that elections had enough votes to be announced the winner as stipulated by the constitution.
The President’s predecessor wants an annulment of that verdict and in its place, another round of election organised between himself and the president.
As part of building his case in court, Mr Mahama filed an application through his lawyer Tony Lithur on Wednesday to inspect six documents including constituency presidential election results summary sheets.
The other documents in demand are the originals of the constituency presidential election result collation forms (form 9) for all constituencies, the originals of all constituency presidential election results summary sheet (form 10), and the originals of the regional presidential election collation forms (form 11) for all regions.
That is not all, the team is also asking for the originals of the regional presidential election results summary sheets (form 12) for all regions and the original of the declaration of the presidential results form (form 13).
But the 7-member panel of judges made up of Chief Justice Anin-Yeboah; Justices Yaw Appau, Marful Sau, Professor Ashie Kotei, Mariama Owusu, Nene Amegatcher, and Gertrude Tokonor did not see reason with this request.
Perhaps they took a cue from the submissions of lawyers of the EC and President Akufo-Addo, 1st and 2nd respondents respectively in the election petition, who had opposed the motion.
The duo argued that the documents are already in the custody of the petitioner, whose agents during the disputed elections were given copies of all electoral documents.