Supreme Court's ruling on Kpandai victory for rule of law in Ghana - Minority in Parliament
The Minority in Parliament has described the ruling by the Supreme Court to quash the High Court in Tamale's judgment that ordered a re-run of the Kpandai constituency parliamentary election as a victory for the rule of law in Ghana.
Describing the Tamale High Court's decision as a “deeply flawed judgment,” the Minority in Parliament indicated that the landmark ruling by the Supreme Court restores the unequivocal mandate freely conferred by the people of Kpandai on their Member of Parliament, Matthew Nyindam, and re‑affirms the primacy of the Constitution, due process and electoral finality in democracy.
They, however, called for an immediate and formal withdrawal of any residual notifications or administrative acts suggesting that the Kpandai seat was vacant, so that the records of Parliament and Electoral Commission (EC) accurately reflected the apex court’s decision and the continuing mandate of Mr Nyindam.
“For the avoidance of doubt, today’s ruling means that the people of Kpandai have an MP who was duly elected on December 7, 2024, duly declared and gazetted and now duly affirmed by the apex court of the land. Their right to representation has been restored and protected and their will as expressed at the ballot box has, at last, been allowed to speak louder than procedural missteps and overreach,” they stated.
Read also: Kpandai: Supreme Court quashes Tamale High Court judgment that annulled election results
Lack of jurisdiction
In a statement issued on behalf of his caucus in Accra on Wednesday [Jan 28, 2026], the Minority Leader, Alexander Afenyo-Markin stated that by the clear 4–1 majority, the Supreme Court had held that the Tamale High Court lacked jurisdiction to entertain the Kpandai election petition because it was filed outside the strict statutory time limits that governed all parliamentary election challenges.
In doing so, he said the Supreme Court had underscored a basic but vital principle that no court, no party, and no institution of state might, under any pretext, rewrite the rules after an election had been held and a winner duly declared and gazetted.
“Where the law says a petition must be filed within a fixed window from the date of gazette, any action outside that window is a nullity, and any judgment founded on such a petition cannot stand.
“The effect of this ruling is that there will be no rerun in Kpandai and that Matthew Nyindam remains, in law and in fact, the duly elected MP for the Kpandai constituency,” he said.
Systemic correction for Ghana’s democracy
Afenyo-Markin, who is also the Member of Parliament for Effutu in the Central Region, said the Supreme Court ruling was not only a personal vindication for the sitting MP and the people of Kpandai, but it was a systemic correction that would resonate far beyond a single constituency.
He said it sent a powerful signal to all trial courts that in election matters, strict compliance with jurisdictional thresholds, timelines, and the limited range of remedies set by statute was not optional.
He said it also reassured the Ghanaian voter that their sovereign will, once lawfully expressed and declared, could not be lightly overturned through adventurous litigation mounted out of time or by remedies that the law did not permit.
Parliament’s premature action
He, however, stated that the Supreme Court’s decision also exposed as reckless and constitutionally unsafe the indecent haste with which Parliament, acting through the Clerk, rushed to declare the Kpandai seat vacant and to notify the Electoral Commission (EC) of a so‑called vacancy while live court processes and applications for stay were still pending.
That letter to the EC, sent on the back of a single first‑instance judgment and in the teeth of pending challenges, triggered plans for a December 30, 2025, rerun in Kpandai that the Supreme Court was ultimately compelled to halt.
He explained the apex court had, as far back as December 2025, ordered the EC to suspend all proceedings related to the Kpandai re-run pending the final determination of the case - an order that should never have been necessary had Parliament observed its own long‑standing practice of waiting for finality before activating the vacancy machinery.
Giving historical antecedents, Mr Afenyo-Markin recalled the true history of Parliament’s treatment of members who had faced serious legal challenges in the past.
In the case of Dan Abodakpi, then MP for Keta, he said Parliament did not move to treat his conviction and imprisonment as an automatic and irreversible mid‑term vacancy.
He said after Mr Abodakpi received a presidential pardon in 2008, he returned from jail to the Chamber and continued to perform his functions as MP until that Parliament was dissolved in January 2009.
Similarly, figures such as Adamu Dramani Sakande, Kwame Nyimakan and James Gyakye Quayson ceased to sit or were removed only when either the full appellate process had run its course or final, explicit orders from superior courts made the constitutional consequences of their cases clear, he said.
“The through‑line in these precedents is restraint: historically, the House has been far more inclined to preserve representation while legal processes unfold than to manufacture vacancies on the basis of a single, non‑final development.
“In sharp contrast, Kpandai was treated as a seat that could be stripped away almost automatically on the basis of a contested High Court decision, without waiting for the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court and despite a pending motion for stay of execution - a posture that the Minority consistently described as unlawful, premature and dangerous for the rule of law,” he said.
