Reference: ‘Election petition "wasting time and time is money"’; [General News of Wednesday, 24 April 2013; Source: Peace FM].

By Otchere Darko

I strongly believe that it is wrong for a section of Ghanaians to say that the election petition lodged by the NPP is “wasting time”; and, therefore, it is a waste of money because, in the eyes of the critics, “time is money”.

*Why do I believe that the statement is wrong?

* In my opinion, the statement is wrong because NPP members have human rights to seek natural justice if they (NPP members) believe that the EC and NDC jointly or separately rigged the 2012 elections. In other words, where NPP members [and for that matter any other Ghanaians] have fundamental human rights that allow them to seek justice in a law court because they sincerely believe that their civic rights as citizens of Ghana were infringed upon by the EC or NDC or both in the last Presidential elections, then they (NPP members and, for that matter, any other Ghanaians) are right, from the point of view or analysis of fundamental human rights, to lodge the election petition in the appropriate court of law in Ghana.

Apart from the fact that the issue is part of the fundamental human rights of NPP members [and, for that matter, other Ghanaians] to seek natural justice where their rights are infringed upon, article 64 of the 1992 Constitution specifically gives NPP members [and, for that matter, any other Ghanaians] the right to present a petition to the Supreme Court for the purpose of challenging the validity of the election of the President where they believe that the elections results declared by the Electoral Commission in respect of the last Presidential elections were incorrect. So, it is clear that NPP members [and, for that matter, any other Ghanaians] have the backing of both human right and constitutional law to challenge the election of the President, if they believe that the election results declared by the EC were wrong. *Therefore, IT CANNOT BE RIGHT when some Ghanaians make statements like the one under reference above.

Without petitioning the Supreme Court, as article 64 mandates all aggrieved Ghanaians to do, the only alternative course of action available to NPP members who feel aggrieved is to “go on the rampage” on the streets of Ghana or, to put it more dramatically, “go down the Kenyan way”.

Is this the preferred option of the critics of the election petition? Certainly not!

*The biggest danger facing Ghana’s young democracy is NOT NPP’s election petition. It is, rather, the tendency for some Ghanaians to decide the on-going Supreme Court case on the streets of Ghana, rather than wait for the Supreme Court to finish its deliberations and make the declaration by itself. *Since the election petition started, there have constantly been two mutually contradicting ‘out-of-court rulings’ that are constantly being made by two opposing ‘political courts’ of ‘injustice’ being operated by ‘strange men and women’ with or without any genuine legal background and whose ‘unorthodox’ jurisdiction originates from the ‘filthy streets’ of Ghana and lead to the making of ‘unorthodox’ and ‘provocative’ judicial statements that always run tangentially with those supposed to be made, or that could be made by orthodox and conventionally accepted courts of justice. *With such constant two-mutually contradicting, ‘out-of-court’, ‘pre-judicial’ and dangerous ‘unorthodox decisions’ always being made by several opposing Ghanaians who belong to or who back the two main political groups in Ghana, it is not difficult for anyone to predict that our nation, this year, is facing its greatest and toughest democratic test since independence in 1957. *It is my fervent wish that ‘lose talks’, like the one above, will be kept to the barest minimum in the next twelve months, if we cannot keep them out of the country completely, and forever.

Source: Otchere Darko; (My Political Views {Domestic}).