A civil servant, Kwesi Eshun, filed the suit against the Commission seeking the court to compel the EC to provide all MP aspirants and presidential candidates with the collation sheets of the 2016 elections.

Akoto Ampaw, the counsel for Mr Eshun, told journalists after the ruling that: “In the current CI94, there is no provision requiring the returning officer to sign this very important document, [neither] is there any provision for the candidates or their agents to sign this important document of record, which is the basis especially in the case of presidential elections, which forms the basis of the decision of the EC as to who wins the elections.”

“Our point is that because the law didn’t provide for the signatures of the returning officers at the constituency collation centres and the candidates or their agents, any [figure] can be changed. So the signatures are to authenticate those documents and the Supreme Court granted those audience,” he added.

Background

The 2012 presidential election was challenged by the NPP in 2013 after the party claimed that a list of unsigned collation sheets constituted an infraction of the law.

The Chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC) at the time, Dr Kwadwo Afari-Gyan subsequently admitted that some 371 unsigned sheets were indeed infractions.