Supreme Court rejects application for new evidence in case on voters register
The Supreme Court’s judgement on the credibility of the voters register is set to be delivered on May 5, 2016 after it dismissed an application by the plaintiffs to submit fresh evidence yesterday.
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In a unanimous decision read by the Chief Justice, Mrs Justice Georgina Theodora Wood, the court dismissed the application, stating that “there was no merit in the application.’’
Other members of the seven-member panel were: Mr Justice Anin Yeboah, Mr Justice Jones Dotse, Mr Justice Baffoe-Bonnie and Mr Justice Joseph Bawa Akamba.
The rest were Mr Justice Anthony A. Benin and Mr Justice Sule N. Gbadegbe.
The legal team of the plaintiffs, Abu Ramadan, a former National Youth Organiser of the People’s National Convention (PNC) and Evans Nimako, claimed it had in its possession a tape recording of the voices of some Electoral Commission (EC) officials.
Counsel for the plaintiffs, Nana Asante Bediatuo, claimed in the application that the EC officials in the tape recording admitted that the EC’s database could not identify the type of identification that people used to register during the 2012 biometric registration and 2014 limited registration exercise
Database
The issue of the EC’s database has become contentious in the case.
At the court’s last sitting on April 21, 2016, Counsel for the EC, Mr Thaddeus Sory, informed the court that the EC had a voters registration database but “it does not reflect the type of identification that was used for the registration exercise”.
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He, however, stated that such information could be extracted from the documents which were used to manually capture the biodata of those who registered.
Nana Asante Bediatuo refuted the claims by Mr Sory and told the court that during a meeting between the parties involved in the case, the EC categorically stated that it had no means to locate the documents that were used by people to register during the 2012 voters registration and 2014 limited registration exercises.
Application
The new evidence, according to the plaintiffs’ counsel, showed that the EC lied to the court when it stated that it had the means to extract the various documents that were used by people to register during the 2012 voters registration exercise and the 2014 limited registration exercise.
The dismissal of the application by the court clears all the hurdles in the case and makes way for the court to give its judgement on May 5, 2016.
Reliefs
The plaintiffs are insisting that the voters register in its current state is not credible enough to be used to conduct any public elections in the country.
They are, therefore, praying the court to set aside the register and compel the EC to compile a fresh voters register before the conduct of any new public election or referendum in the country.
Alternatively, the two want an order from the highest court of the land compelling the EC to audit the current voters register by validating the registration of each person whose name is currently in the register.