Lawyer Maxwell Opoku Agyeman, a legal luminary and a lecturer at the Ghana School of Law has indicated that the election petition in court presented by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) is not an issue of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) being a part of it or not.
According to him, the fact that the Supreme Court by a majority accepted the joinder application of the NDC does not mean the NDC have won the first round of the suit as per media reportage on Wednesday; a day after the ruling.
Some of the newspapers published on Wednesday had headlines like; �NPP loses first round�, �NDC wins 1st round�, Nana Vrs Mahama-NDC joins fight and many more; all of these to say that the Supreme Court has accepted the joinder application put forward by the NDC.
However, speaking in an interview to Tweneboa Kodua (TK) on Peace FM�s flagship programme �Kokrokoo�, Lawyer Agyeman said the main case is not NPP versus NDC. According to him, it is whether or not the declaration was valid and whether there were truly irregularities: �This is just a joinder of a party and it does not determine who wins and who loses�.
He said: �with this issue, there is no round one or round two. Some of these things most often are unnecessary. Now that they (NDC) have joined, they also have to send their response to the petition and then the substantive issue will now be dealt with. There has not been a final ruling on the issue; it is just a procedural matter and so they (media) should exercise restraints and choose their words well�.
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