The Supreme Court of Ghana, in dismissing an application filed by lawyers for the petitioner in the election petition hearing which was seeking to inspect the documents of the 1st Respondent, the Electoral Commission (EC), said John Dramani Mahama has access to all the documents of the EC in respect of the petition.
The justices said on Wednesday, February 3 that proceedings in court so far show that the petitioner has copies of the documents which form the basis of the case before them.
According to the apex court, the duplicates of the documents which are in possession of the petitioner, are as good as the originals.
In dismissing the application, Chief Justice Anin Yeboah, who read the ruling on behalf of the justices, said “the proceedings so far show that the petitioner has copies of the documents which are the reasons for this application. We are of the view that no proper case has been before us to warrant the exercise of our discretion in favour of the applicant.
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“Order 29 of CI 47, which is the basis for this application, should not be read in isolation, it should be read in conjunction with Rule 11 of the said Order.”
He added that Section 166 of the Evidence Act 323 of 1975 “makes it clear that a duplicate of a document is admissible to the same extent as the original unless a genuine question is raised as to the authenticity of the duplicate. No issue has been raised against the authenticity of the document in possession of the applicant.”
Lead Counsel for the petitioner, Tsatsu Tsikata, on Tuesday filed an application in court to inspect the EC’s documents.
The documents they were seeking to inspect included the original constituency presidential election result collation forms for all constituencies, constituency presidential election results summary sheet, regional presidential election summary sheets for all regions, and the declaration of the presidential results form.