Vice President of IMANI Ghana, Kofi Bentil has criticized the Supreme Court verdict that validated the election of John Dramani Mahama as President in the 2012 general elections.
He wondered why the Supreme Court justices did not invalidate the outcome of the elections even though almost all of them agreed that there were irregularities which could have significantly affected the results.
Speaking at a public forum on Election 2016 organised by the ‘Let My Vote Count Alliance’ (LMVCA) in Accra on Tuesday, Mr Bentil, who is also a lawyer, indicated that “in the position we are today, the effect of the Supreme Court ruling is that today there is no rule, no law regulating elections in Ghana; it does not matter if you are verified or not, it does not matter whether there is over-voting, it does not matter whether the officials don’t sign because according to the wisdom of our justices, once the vote has been declared, that is the end of it. Go to court.”
That in itself is a problem, going to court you have nine justices; five of them declared that there have been irregularities, in law again you cannot declare that there have been irregularities and not have remedy.”
Issues
He expressed dissatisfaction with the ruling of the Supreme Court which suggested that “once the will of the people have been ascertained by one way or the other, it is not necessary to use process to invalidate it.”
According to him, “That logic is patently wrong and posterity will look back at this judgment and will judge it very harshly.”
He said “the infamous election petition was about contesting the process, it was about seeking procedural justice, it was about asking the court to determine that as per the process this election went through, this outcome is not correct, simply put whether there had been irregularities or not and whether those irregularities were of significant nature to affect the results.”
Almost all the justices, including the testimony of the then Chairman of the Electoral Commission, Dr Kwadwo Afari Gyan himself established that there were irregularities significant enough to have affected the elections yet the court failed to remedy the situation, he indicated.
Argument
Once it had been established that there the irregularities were significant to affect the elections, the Supreme Court had the option of either cancelling the entire elections, the results of the polling stations or asking the EC to conduct a re-run, Kofi Bentil said.
“When five out of nine persons (justices) determined that there had been sufficient irregularities and recommended either a cancellation or re-run, there is no logic under the sun and there is no human being who can tell me that that’s a minority decision against the petitioners- the NPP represented by the late Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey and Dr Bawumia, he insisted.
“What it means is that you cannot be sure even when you win, what is going to happen. It is not possible for you to make a ruling on an outcome and totally put away the process because you breached every procedural justice principle.”
According to him, “They [Supreme Court] specifically had a duty of uplifting and upholding the law to the point where even in the face of extreme provocation, people have a certain belief that the law will take care of things but I don’t think they have done that and that is why I’m critical of what they did.”
Justification
“So it is patently wrong for our Supreme Court to say that it does not matter that the person was not verified when we had spent millions of dollars to buy verification equipment,” he disclosed.
“It is about the process; it is about the process and sanctity of the process and it is not just because we are sticklers of process but because a whole state depends on that process.
“Elections have consequences; if they don’t bring you war, they bring you ‘dumsor’ (intermittent power supply) for which reason if you lose your faith in the process, you are likely to take the law into your own hands and that’s a problem.”
Mr Bentil said “the role of the electorate is to vote and go home but the role of the electorate today is to make sure you police your vote.
“The role of the electorate is to make sure that because it has been declared in so many ways that you absolutely have to win at the polling station, once the Electoral Commission declares you as the winner: you are the winner, and you have to make sure you win at the polling station,” he added.
Vice President of IMANI admitted that that could be a recipe for chaos, saying “we ought to find a way to do that without plunging this nation into chaos.”
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