Deputy General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Peter Boamah Otukonor has stated that the EC intentionally created the circumstance that contributed to the Supreme Court’s ruling to adjourn the National Democratic Congress’ (NDC) suit challenging the registration exercise being conducted in Senior High Schools.
He made the statement in an interview with GhanaWeb on July 21, 2020.
“First of all, it was a very disappointing development that happened in court. Indeed the judge did not air in the decision to postpone the matter because you could see that typically, the judge wanted to fast track the issue because of the nature of the application that we have sent to court. But the Electoral Commission deliberately and consciously, and mischievously perpetrated the circumstance that led to the postponement of the case to October 26, 2020,” he said.
He further revealed that the EC lawyers said they will not be available for the Judge’s ruling since the Judge’s date for the re-opening of the case was a period for legal vacation.
“The reason they cited was that they were not going to be available, the first instance, they just filed the response to the case. The judge has not seen the response, our lawyer has not seen the response, and so they cannot even raise the issues and go into the matter.
The judge insisted that we do 27th of August, and they said 27th of august was a holiday, 27th of august too, the legal vacation starts. Luckily for us, the judge is a vacation judge and he was willing to sit within the vacation. But according to the EC lawyer, they were not available to do the case within the vacation, and that they are going for a holiday.
We asked them where they are going for the holiday because the judge said that they can’t fly outside the country so there’s no excuse that they are going on a holiday, they said they were going to their hometown. The lawyer said he is from the Volta region so he will go for vacation in the Volta region, so in that case, he cannot have the judge sit on the case during the vacation of the court,” he narrated.
Mr Otukonor concluded that the EC is intentionally dragging their feet on the issue to give more room for students to be registered.
“They know that this matter, if they postpone it, by the time they get t October 26, the process will have ended. But we are gratified by the declaration by the court because with that declaration, even if they have ended the exercise, we can still take action,” he concluded.
Peter Boamah Otukonor, Deputy General Secretary of the NDC