Saturday,
August 24, 2013
Item Two: The Petitioners’
Allegations in Perspective
Folks, we now turn attention to
the substance of the petition that was laid before the Supreme Court by the petitioners
to prove why it is not only couched in “bad faith” but also why the Supreme
Court won’t uphold it. We need to backtrack to the very issues that informed
the petition hearing. The petitioners initially laid before the Supreme Court a
litany of allegations that they deemed to have compromised Election 2012 in
favour of President Mahama.
According to their petition, the
allegations included vote rigging, particularly the padding of votes to boost
President Mahama’s standing; stealing of Akufo-Addo’s votes for President
Mahama; collusion between the Electoral Commission, President Mahama and the NDC
to rig the elections through manipulation of the
electoral process; and many more. Based on these allegations, they
organized a number of public forums, backed by their sub-groups (the “Let My
Vote Count Alliance”, the Young Patriots, etc.) to mount incessant personal
attacks on President Mahama and Dr. Afari Gyan.
They called President Mahama a
thief (“julor” in Ga) and Kennedy Agyapong particularly labelled Dr. Afari Gyan
as the “devil” and appealed to God to strike him dead for stealing the
elections for President Mahama.
Then, when the Supreme Court
couldn’t get the petitioners and the respondents to determine what particularly
it should hear, the Court itself REFINED the petition, giving it a new
unsolicited twist altogether:
a.
to first establish whether or not there were statutory
violations, irregularities, omissions and malpractices in the 2012 general
elections; and
b.
to ascertain whether violations, irregularities, omissions
and malpractices affected the results of the election.
We all saw the proceedings as
they unfolded over the past four months or so. The petitioners categorized
their allegations into four groups and went about digging for evidence from the
pink sheets to support them. They particularly settled on serial numbers,
voting without biometric verification, over-voting, and non-signing of pink
sheets by Presiding Officers.
They approached the hearing with
a posture framed around “water-tight evidence” and claimed that “the evidence
is in the pink sheets”. They couldn’t tell the court how many pink sheets
exactly constituted their evidence. We know how the KPMG settled it all only
for the petitioners to continue struggling up to the last hurdle—the oral
submission stage, leaving the Court in doubt on what exactly the quantum of
exhibits are!
All along, Dr. Afari Gyan had kept repeating that NO ONE voted TWICE or more!
And NO ONE was PREVENTED from voting. These two issues will be considered as very
serious irregularities in any election if they occur; but they did not take
place in 2012. None was reported by the party agents nor did the petitioners
state or prove any in court.
The NPP campaign team spoke through Boakye Agyarko and declared
the elections as the most PEACEFUL in the history of elections in Ghana! That
declaration confirmed the observations of the local and international observers
who had proved that the elections were also FREE, FAIR, and TRANSPARENT.
The petitioners presented a problem to themselves and the court
regarding what constituted “irregularities” and “widespread irregularities”. Could
they quantify them? No, because no measure exists for doing so. Thus, before
such allegations on “irregularities” can be accepted and used as the basis for
nullifying votes, there should have been a quantifiable threshold measure for
those words and phrases (“irregularities” and “widespread irregularities”).
Obviously, then, it will be difficult for the judges to find anything in the
constitution, in terms of irregularities, to nullify anyone's vote. (Thanks
to a friend at one forum to which I contribute for coming up with this
perspective).
As for the unsigned pink sheets, they provoke derisive laughter,
not evidence to prevail over the judges. The petitioners have not provided any
evidence that anyone was PREVENTED from signing the sheets. In fact, they did
not even complain that anyone was PREVENTED from signing the sheets. So where
were the people who were supposed to sign the pink sheets? If they were
somewhere else doing their own things, why should votes be annulled because of their
laxity (whether premeditated, impulsive, or intentional, for whatever reason)? (Again,
this idea was given by the friend that I mentioned above).
Does this mean that in future anybody can walk away from a polling
station without signing a pink sheet, and their party will claim irregularities
later to fight as the petitioners are doing? And also claim that votes should
be annulled? (My friend’s question).
The statutory provision is for Presiding Officers to sign pink
sheets; and the 990 out of 26,002 that were not signed could be described as an
irregularity; is this a good reason why the votes of over 4 million people who
genuinely voted on December 7 and 8 2012, should be annulled?
The failure of an officer to sign a pink sheet, if he was not
prevented from doing so, should be a punishable offence, and a responsibility
of the parties. Perhaps parliament should pass a law, making it an offence to
stop this ROT and NONSENSE. (Thanks to my friend quoted above).
The petitioners couldn’t provide
any acceptable definition for over-voting nor did they substantiate that
allegation with evidence from the primary document (the ballot papers). Dr.
Afari Gyan made it clear that NO ONE voted TWICE or
more! The petitioners didn’t challenge him with any evidence from any polling
station but relied on clerical errors in pink sheets. Ludicrous!
As was established throughout the hearing, NO ONE voted without
passing through biometric verification. The petitioners didn’t provide any
concrete evidence from any polling station to the contrary. So, wherein lies
the justification for their allegation?
In the end, all this hassle of petition hearing could have been
curtailed had the petitioners done their homework to establish that their
protests against Election 2012 aren’t supported by the reality that prevailed
at the polling stations during voting and the counting of votes. If anything at
all, they should blame themselves and their own agents for “sleeping” on the
job. They have already reduced their agents to scumbags, thumping themselves on
the chest and telling the respondents that “You and I were not there”.
And as my friend intelligently concluded:
Big Question: Is this a reason to nullify people’s
votes?
Big Answer: No!!!!!!
I shall return…
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mjbokor@yahoo.com
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