Chief Justice Anin Yeboah
The Supreme Court yesterday finally gave its ruling on the controversial 2020 election petition.
As it mysteriously turned out, the evidence that the petitioner was looking for was not in Jean Mensa’s handbag but on General Mosquito’s calculator.
When we recall the attempt by hoodlums, before the declaration of the presidential and parliamentary elections, to besiege the headquarters of the Electoral Commission, it becomes patently clear what the petitioner intended, when he dithered in going to court, in presenting his case, and kept pushing without any legal basis for the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission to physically enter the witness box.
NDC’s Double-edged sword
The attempt to go to court therefore proved that the leadership of the National Democratic Congress and the lawyers of the party were hell-bent on waging a war of attrition against the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, with another drawn against President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and the next flagbearer of his party into the 2024 general elections.
The processes, which had throughout appeared to discerning Ghanaians more or less as a circus of legal-mumbo-jumbo than a sincere litigation, true to its bidding, witnessed an unheralded saga of ‘trial and error’ strategies from the petitioner’s corner.
Intrigues
It was an open secret that evidence that was crucial to strengthening their case had not been forthcoming throughout the proceedings, as the petitioner’s corner intriguingly pushed for the respondents to provide that evidence.
Again, interestingly, while they failed in the opinion of the court to provide that evidence, they used the official briefing sessions to push their own case in their own court of public opinion – until the Law Lords cuffed one big fish among the petitioner’s lawyers for contempt.
That brought out, in the opinion of the decent public, the extent of the petitioner’s intention to send Ghana on a wild goose chase in a matter in which political vengeance was more the motive than legality, legitimacy and the national interest.
Street law
It was clear that while the court’s hallowed processes rolled out, party hotheads at all layers of the NDC were activated to pull the nation back, with the venom spreading onto the corridors of the Legislature, as the Appointments Committee, which usually works on the anvils of consensus, appeared to have become a terror squad and inquisition tool in the hands of the Minority members on the committee.
Also on the streets and the airwaves, the constituencies and social media, the battle to discredit the Supreme Court and Ghana pervaded. Not even a last minute attempts by the Ghana Journalists Association and the judicial authorities to moderate the grounds were appreciated, as NDC’s modern-day apostles of freedom of expression in the petitioner’s corners across the country conspired to cross the boundaries.
Evidence on Nketia’s calculator
As Ghanaians gathered from the verdict read by the eminent Chief Justice Anin Yeboah, His Lordship quoted generously from the admissions on figures churned out by NDC General Secretary Johnson Asiedu Nketiah’s calculator, and which the NDC scribe did not challenge, but admitted to.
Strikingly, that calculator also revealed that, given the allegation of some other sampled data the NDC tended to rely on in court, even those figures could not be enough to ‘redeem’ Mr Mahama or ‘demote’ President Nana Akufo-Addo.
NDC’s real enemies
As we move forward in growing our democratic institutions, we must now realise who our real enemies are or, for that matter, that of the NDC as a political party are.
They are Petitioner John Mahama, witnesses Asiedu Nketia, Kpessa-Whyte and Rojo Mettle-Nunoo as well as the teeming lawyers who failed to tell their client and party the truth.
But the enemies also include the educated but cacophonous communicators who look decent while acting pathologically indecent.
With the verdict finally out, we at the Daily Statesman entreat all Ghanaians to move on and let us continue to do our bit in the interest and development of the country.
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