Prime News Ghana

High Court orders EC to allow APC’s Hassan Ayariga effect corrections

By Michael Eli Dokosi
Hassan Ayariga
Hassan Ayariga
Shares
facebook sharing button Share
twitter sharing button Tweet
email sharing button Email
sharethis sharing button Share

An Accra High Court has ordered the Electoral Commission to allow All People’s Congress (APC) presidential aspirant correct mistakes on his nomination papers.

The court presided over by Justice Barbara Tetteh Charway dismissed arguments by the EC that as an independent institution set up by the constitution, the court had no locus to compel it put aspirants on the ballot.  

The EC had disqualified Hassan Ayariga from contesting this year’s election, citing errors on his nomination papers but the court was having none of the advanced arguments by the EC lawyer.

The following was the EC’s statement regarding his disqualification:

//Dr. Hassan Ayariga   - All Peoples’ Congress (APC)

The Commission is unable to accept Dr. Ayariga’s nomination for the following reason:

  1. The candidate did not provide evidence on his statutory declaration as to his hometown or residence in the constituency as per the legal requirements.
  2. Two subscribers to Dr. Ayariga’s nominations also subscribed for another presidential candidate. This is in breach of Regulation 7(4) of CI 94. The implication is that the two subscribers are disqualified and therefore, Dr. Ayariga does not have the requisite number of subscribers under Regulation 7(2) (b) of CI 94.  The details of the duplicate subscribers are as follows:  

In addition, the signatures of both voters are different on the two nomination forms. This raises questions as to the legitimacy of those signatures. 

We will refer the matter of the possible forgeries of these signatures to the Ghana Police Service and the Attorney General for investigation and prosecution in line with the following sections of the Criminal Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29):  Section 211: Perjury Section 248: making false declaration etc. for office or voting; Section 251: Deceiving a public officer Section 256: Corruption, Intimidation and personation in respect of election.// 

Despite the above, Justice Charway ordered the EC to in accordance with regulation 9 of CI 94 which govern this year’s election, allow Hassan Ayariga to amend his nomination papers and submit them.

About 12 political parties had their presidential aspirants dismissed by the EC from the presidential race on varied grounds.