Lawyer for John Mahama in the Election Petition, Tsatsu Tsikata says the Supreme Court judgement sets a dangerous precedence.
Speaking on the KSM Show, Tsatsu Tsikata said what he thinks is problematic with the judgement is that base on the declaration by the EC boss no candidate had the 50% plus one constitutional requirement.
"...fundamentally what I think is problematic with the judgement is that we have a situation in this country that if you base yourself on the declaration that was made by the Chairperson as we all heard the numbers that she gave there was not a constitutional valid declaration because no candidate got 50%.
"...I believe so, as I said we put forward before the court arguments of law as well as our statement of fact backed by evidence which supported why we were insisting that based on her data so what we ended up with as a result that came public was based on a supposed correction as I said the correction was not made by her."
Explaining further why he thinks the judgement sets a dangerous precedence, Tsatsu Tsitaka said:
"And we are setting a clearly dangerous precedence for the country...that is why I will humbly say that it sets dangerous precedence because what it means essentially is that in future elections you can have a chairperson come and make an announcement with numbers which nobody can really explain and those numbers do not lead to the constitutional 50%+ and later on she comes and say well there was a mistake there and there is no explanation of how the mistake occurred..."
A seven-member of the Supreme Court on March 4 dismissed former President John Mahama’s suit challenging the 2020 election results.
In reading the judgment on Thursday, March 4, 2020, Chief Justice, Anim Yeboah stated that the petitioner failed to prove his case beyond a reasonable doubt. The Supreme Court panel added that the errors announced by the Electoral Commission Chairperson, Jean Mensa, cannot be used to invalidate the election after those had been corrected.
According to the Supreme Court, the errors announced by Jean Mensa did not adversely affect any of the candidates in the 2020 elections. The Supreme Court also held that the petitioner failed to adduce enough evidence to merit a re-run between Mr Mahama and President Akufo-Addo.
The Chief Justice in reading the judgment described as fanciful the witness statement by the Michael Kpessa-Whyte and Rojo Mettle-Nunoo.
Justice Anim Yeboah said the two witnesses had themselves to blame after abandoning their duty in the strongroom since they were under no obligations to leave when their work in the room was not finished.