The Supreme Court has ordered the Electoral
Commission to make collation sheets for Presidential elections available to
parties and their agents after close of polls.The petitioner who is
former Director of Research at Parliament, Kwesi Nyame Tease-Eshun, sought to
expose flaws in the new law that governs the 2016 general
elections.
Under the CI 94, the EC is not obliged to provide copies of
the collation sheet to political party agents. The petitioner, represented by
Akoto Ampaw described this provision in the CI as an
'absurdity'.
Collation sheets
“It defies reason and constitutes an
absurdity for [the EC] not to make provision for furnishing the candidates or
their agents with copies thereof at the constituency collation centre,” the writ
states.
CI 94 was meant to deal with flaws in the previous law (CI 74),
as exposed in the 2013 election petition. But it appears even the new CI 94 is
problematic.
Justice Atuguba who read the judgment of the Court on behalf
of the seven-member panel directed that the EC confers with lawyers for the
plaintiff to rectify the anomaly identified in the CI 94.
The legal teams
are later to come to court with a resolution after which the Court will adopt
the amendment as law.
Two regulations in the CI 94 is emphatic that no
political party or presidential candidate is entitled to a copy of the 275
collation sheets.
The collation sheet is crucial evidence because it is
the only proof that shows if the results declared by the EC match the results
captured on the sheets.
National Collation Centre which shall receive the
collated results from all 29,000 polling stations will under the law declare the
winner of the presidential race and hand over the documents to the EC.
It
means any candidate grieved by the results will effectively be unable to
challenge the outcome because the aggrieved candidate may have no official
evidence to make his case.
Even worse, the CI 94 makes no provision
requiring the collation forms to be signed by either the Returning Officer or
party agents, the petitioner complained.
The writ which was first filed
on September 27 describes this failure as puzzling, arguing that the collation
sheet is “strategic and critical” and it is “the endorsement of the signatures”
that will validate the collation sheet “as an authentic record of the
election.”
It will be recalled that the 2012 presidential elections was
challenged by the NPP in 2013 on the basis that a list of unsigned collation
sheets constituted an infraction of the law.
Counsel for petitioners
confronted the Chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC), Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan
with 371 unsigned sheets leading to his admission that they are
infractions. |
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