Election Petition: Ghana lost an opportunity for electoral reforms – Kojoga Adawudu
Lawyer Victor Kojoga Adawudu
Victor Kojoga Adawudu says the country lost a great opportunity to review and adopt some major reforms of its electoral processes.
Read full articleSpeaking to Joy News on Thursday, Adawudu, a member of the NDC legal team said:
“Ghanaians have lost some reforms that would have been made if all the parties were able to, say, or the Electoral Commissioner, the Chairperson, would have told Ghanaians the process by which she was able to go through to come out with the C. I 135.
We are saying that there were errors. If the Supreme Court says we are not able to prove, that will mean that we are not going to have any reforms from the Electoral Commission.”
Kojoga Adawudu then echoed the foretold anarchy that is on the lips of the man in the street: “When I go to the collation centre or polling station where the results are being declared, I won’t take any instructions from any administrative person or official who is erring. That would mean that if he or she would not also listen and do the right thing, we will have to settle it there."
He continued, “We will settle it there. We won’t go anywhere again because it is my duty to make sure that I am there and I will have to perform my duties. So any erring administrative officer like happened in Techiman, nobody is going to take it and say we are going to respect the rules of the law and say that we will take it to the administration for it to be resolved or take it to the court. That is one of the things that we should have spoken about and have reformed.”
The Supreme Court in its judgement made it clear citing decided cases including cases from sister African countries that the courts do not protect "the indolent" who fail to stop their rights being abused.
“When people were saying that we have no case, there is no cause of action, I think it was made clear. You can challenge the validity of the election,” Victor Kojoga Adawudu stated.
The Justices of the Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed the election petition that challenged the 2020 presidential election verdict declared on December 9, saying that it lacked merit.
