Election Petition Trial Is About The Mandate of The People, Not a Land Litigation Case - Mahama's Aide

An aide to former President John Dramani Mahama, Godwin Edudzi Tamakloe has cautioned against the impression that is being created pertaining to the 2020 election petition that justice will not be served at the end of the trial.

According to him, it will be wrong for some people to say that due to time-bound as indicated in the CI99, the process of the 2020 election petition trial should be rushed through by the Supreme Court to give its ruling.

Speaking on Okay FM’s 'Ade Akye Abia' Morning Show, the private legal practitioner who is not happy about the comment that the lawyers of John Mahama are deliberately delaying the trial said that the petition is about the mandate of the people and not a land litigation trial.

He added that at the end of the trial, the ruling of the Supreme Court must serve the interest of the people and not give room for anyone to think that justice was not served, as that impression if materialised may encourage people to scheme something during elections.

He alleged that the 2020 general election happened to be the only election in the country where the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC) declared the Presidential Election results without seeing a single pink sheet to support the results declared.

Inasmuch as the lawyers of former President John Dramani Mahama are not asking the Supreme Court to use 8 months to decide the 2020 election petition, lawyer Edudzi Tamakloe insisted that the rejected applications filed by the election Petitioner were allowed in the 2012 election petition.

“It is the same election petition or are we saying that when it comes to Nana Addo, there should be different rules? The CI99 did not state that no one can apply for interrogatory or review as well as request for facts to be admitted. The CI99 did not also state that one cannot apply for stay,” he argued.

He was of the view that, “if the rule-maker intended to stop all the applications we have filed, at least they had the benefit of what happened in the past; they could have explicitly forbidden that conduct”.

“The rule maker knowing the effect of amendment wrote clearly that you cannot amend to alter or add to your grounds. The rule maker knows what went on in the past so they wrote it down explicitly that you cannot do this. If it is the intention that you cannot apply for stay, interrogatory, request for a document, he could have written them down as law in the CI99,” he posited.