The Member of Parliament for Asante Akim North, Andy Appiah Kubi, has commended the Supreme Court for its decision regarding the High Court ruling on the re-collation of results in some constituencies.
Appiah Kubi, a private legal practitioner, stated that the High Court should have allowed the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to present its case before making a judgment.
“The Supreme Court did a good job…the High Court ought to have allowed the NDC to make their case,” he said in an interview on TV3 on Saturday, December 28.
He further emphasized, “I commend the Supreme Court for the direction given now. The principle of audi alteram partem, or ‘hear the other side,’ is universal, and even God applied it in the Garden of Eden.”
The Supreme Court has instructed the Accra High Court to reconsider the NDC’s mandamus application concerning four constituencies with disputed results: Okaikwei Central, Ablekuma North, Tema Central, and Techiman South.
In a unanimous 5-0 decision on Friday, December 27, the Apex Court ruled that the presiding judge in the case should have heard the NDC’s legal representation regarding their application to join the NPP’s mandamus request, as the NDC was an interested party that would be affected by the ruling.
The NDC was challenging a High Court ruling that directed the Electoral Commission (EC) to re-collate parliamentary election results in nine disputed constituencies.
Parliamentary candidates from both the NDC and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) had filed a writ seeking to compel the EC to conduct fresh elections in these constituencies, citing anomalies in the collation of results and the subsequent declaration of winners.
On Friday, December 20, Presiding Judge Joseph Adu Owusu Agyeman ordered the EC to re-collate the results in the Ablekuma North constituency, despite objections from NDC legal representatives, led by Godwin Edudzi Tameklo. The lawyers argued that the results of these constituencies had already been declared, but the court determined that the anomalies in the process warranted a re-collation.
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