Opinions of Saturday, 31 August 2013

Columnist: Jackson, Margaret

Supreme Court Sends Akufo-Addo Crashing

Supreme Court Sends Akufo-Addo Crashing To The Bush

By Margaret Jackson

August 29, 2013

Those who thought Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the twice unsuccessful presidential candidate on the ticket of the NPP, had a solid case in his misadventures petition case challenging the results of the 2012 Presidential Election got the biggest shock of their lives when the Supreme Court threw away the bogus case.

The jubilation that erupted in Accra and other parts of the country was beyond measure as the petition case had kept a stranglehold on the country for eight long months leading investors who want to come to Ghana holding onto their purses.

The petition case which has led to Ghana’s cedi bleeding badly against other currencies especially the dollar has not helped President Mahama who has spent eight months of his presidency in court.

President John Mahama won the 2012 Presidential Election on a clean slate, but Nana Akufo-Addo who could not face the shame of losing the election to the former who campaigned for only three months refused to concede defeat, alleging that there were malpractices and irregularities.

Akufo-Addo then proceeded to the Supreme Court (SC) with a litany of allegations including over voting, voting without biometric verification and unsigned pink sheets among others.

But a bizarre thing happened in court when lawyers for Akufo-Addo in their pleadings asked the SC to throw away more than 4 million votes in order to pave the way for Nana Akufo-Addo to become president, even though they were not able to prove their case with one solid witness apart from the pink sheets they bundled to court.

Another thing that did not sit well with the respondents in the case was the fact that the so-called pink sheets sent to court by Akufo-Addo to buttress his case came from only strongholds won by President Mahama.

It has therefore come as a welcome relief with the dismissal of the bogus case which has now given life to the President Mahama to carry on with his vision till 2016.

magjackson80@yahoo.com http://majjacks80.blogspot.com