Supreme Court erred in its election petition ruling - Tsatsu Tsikata

The veteran lawyer said the final decision to dismiss the case of the petitioners will go a long a way to make state institutions unaccountable to Ghanaians.

Mr. Tsikata insisted that the ruling implies that the Chairpersons of the Electoral Commission (EC) can in future elections declare a candidate as a winner with wrong figures and no one can hold him or her accountable.

He said this in an interview with Kwaku Sintim Misa on Pan African TV.

“…And that’s why I would humbly say that it’s a dangerous precedent because what it means essentially is that in any future election, a chairperson and the Returning Officer can come and make an announcement with numbers which nobody can really explain and those numbers do not also meet the constitutional threshold of 50%+1 and later come and say there was a mistake and there is no explanation as to how those mistakes occurred.”

Mr. Tsikata insisted that the ruling implies that the Chairpersons of the Electoral Commission (EC) can in future elections declare a candidate as a winner with wrong figures and no one can hold him or her accountable.

He also said:  “I am convinced that in time some of the decisions which I am suggesting humbly are not right that [were] made by the judges about the interrogatories and so on; they are decisions which will not ultimately stand the test of time. That’s my conviction.”

Tsikata observed: “They won’t stand the test of time because when you look at the framework of the constitution that we have, and the way in which that framework seeks to make public officials accountable it is difficult to square that constitutional framework with decisions which just put a shield, a cordon around public officials and does not enable them to step forward to give an account of what they’ve done. So, I think that the whole constitutional framework that we have seeks to enhance the accountability of public officials.”