Former President John Dramani Mahama has disclosed two major reasons why filed the 2020 election petition at the Supreme Court.
According to him, he filled it to calm the atmosphere which he said was charged and to also test the legal right of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
In the view of Mr Mahama, several anomalies occurred in the elections which affected the results, a situation he said resulted in anger among supporters of the NDC.
He said he therefore decided to rely on the provisions of the 1992 constitution by going to the apex court to resolve the matter.
Speaking with the United States Chapter of the NDC at the Bentley University on Sunday March 27, 2022 he stated again that “We have all done elections before and at the printing press, all the political parties are supposed to send agents to the printing press. We sit there from the time they start printing until we finish. When they finish, we all tally how many ballots they were asked to print, we all look at the numbers and everything and if we are satisfied then all the agents sign a certificate of completion to say that we are satisfied, that it tallies with the number you were asked to print.
“And so, we did that at the printing press and left. But one of our agents had to go back, he was going to look for something, he had left his laptop bag and so he was going to look for it, only for him to see millions of ballot papers being printed.
“When he asked why they were printing extra ballot papers, they said the EC had asked them to print. Out of frustration, they said in case there was a second round. But seven people will not go for second round, ballot papers for a second round is only for two people, the top two. No proper explanation on why those ballot papers were printed, were given.
“Some of the people were seen later carrying ballot papers and we reported them to the police. Up till date, nobody has been charged or prosecuted for carrying those extra ballot papers.
“These are the things that happened in the elections and so we thought the elections weren’t free and fair and so we went to the Supreme Court. One, to test our legal right and then secondly, to also calm the atmosphere.
“The atmosphere was quite charged, a few of our people took to the streets, there was a threat of violence, and we didn’t want to go down that path and so it was better to use what the constitution has given us. Once we filed the suit I noticed that it calmed everybody and of course we went and got 7:0 on every issue that we raised.”
The seven-member panel of the Supreme Court by a unanimous decision dismissed the petition on March 4, 2021 on the grounds that it lacked merit.
