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Yesterday’s ruling by the Supreme Court ordering the Electoral Commission give all disqualified presidential aspirants the opportunity to rectify anomalies in their nomination papers, perhaps, brings to closure the legal tussles surrounding the December 7 elections.

The Supreme Court in a unanimous decision ordered the EC to extend the nomination period from Monday, November 7 to today, Tuesday November 8, 2016.

We cannot run away from the fact that the Madam Charlotte Osei-led EC has not handled matters well as far as issues surrounding the conduct of this year’s presidential and parliamentary elections are concerned.

Well-meaning Ghanaians had consistently expressed fears as to whether the December 7 elections could be held as scheduled, but the Supreme Court, in its wisdom, has given a decisive ruling which at least gives us some sigh of relief.

Now, we have no doubt about the date the elections would be conducted, but our concern is about the quality of the elections, given where we are today and the unhelpful and intractable posturing of the EC.

The EC’s posture appears to be giving more credence to speculations that it might be doing the bidding of the governing NDC and President John Dramani Mahama.

It is therefore not surprising that the main opposition New Patriotic Party remains worried about the EC’s handling of issues, particularly the voters register.

The party at a press conference yesterday raised pertinent issues which ought to be addressed immediately by the EC, including the provision of a complete and trustworthy voters register. As indicated by the NPP, the EC is just repeating similar mistakes it committed against the party in the lead up to the 2012 elections.

As of now, the EC is yet to furnish the NPP with a hard copy version of the voters register even though it has been printing copies of the register over the last couple of weeks.

Aside that, another complaint raised by the NPP is its inability to get all the files of the 275 constituencies because 31 of them are corrupted, leaving them with only 244 constituency files.

The final voters register is supposed to include proxy, transfer, special and absentee voters list. However, the NPP has been given none of these lists even though the National Democratic Congress is said to having the full and final list. What kind of game is the EC up to?

The EC has no basis to discriminate against the NPP if it wants to be trusted as an institutional that can offer a level playing field for all the political parties involved in the December 7 elections.

Peace, we believe, is essential but the nation appears to be losing sight of the fact a very important pre-requisite for peace is justice. That is why we do not understand why those who have been calling for peace, as if Ghana had even been at war, should not be interested in putting some pressure on the EC to ensure fairness and transparency in its dealings with all the parties.

The EC has been created and empowered by the constitution to supervise our elections in a free, fair, transparent and credible manner. It therefore becomes very worrying to have an electoral management body that decides to circumvent the rules governing its activities to favour a particular party.

At least, we are happy the courts are up on their feet doing everything possible to safeguard the nation’s democracy.

Nonetheless, the EC must be reminded that it owes the nation a duty to conduct free, fair, transparent and credible elections on December 7 without external pressure. That is its core mandate and there cannot be any excuses whatsoever.

We want to caution that Ghanaians in their determination to see the exit of the corrupt and incompetent Mahama government from the corridors of power cannot allow the EC to have its way when it becomes clear that it wants to tilt the outcome of the elections to a pre-determined direction.