The Judicial Committee of the University of Ghana chapter of the Graduate Students Association of Ghana, (GRASAG), on Monday gave its verdict on petitions challenging the results of the April 26 GRASAG-UG executive election.
The committee ruled that, the declaration of results made by the Electoral Commission on Saturday, April 29, 2017, be upheld to be the valid results of the elections.
To this end, there will be no re-run of the entire election as the petitioners had advocated for. The reasons being that;
1. The claims of irregularities made by the petitioners have not been clearly demonstrated to materially affect the results of the elections.
2. There was not sufficient evidentiary document to support or validate the claims of irregularities made by the petitioners.
3. The claims made were not directly relating to the election results, but relating to the evidence surrounding and leading up to the elections, which should have been raised and addressed before or during the elections.
But the order for the reinstatement and incorporation of votes from VALCO PHASE TWO polling station in the final results of the elections was upheld.
This was so because not incorporating the votes will mean that voters have been disenfranchised as the already cast ballots would not be reflected in the final results.
On this ruling, the votes for only the organizing secretary was counted in the presence of all aspirants, their agents, members of the judicial committee and all observers present.
The results of the number of votes that were cast before the shutdown of the VALCO PHASE TWO polling stations are outlined below;
No CANDIDATE NO OF VOTES
The above votes were incorporated in the already existing votes. Hence, Elorm Tagbortor emerged as the Organizing Secretary Elect for GRASAG-UG.
To this effect therefore, the committee ordered the Electoral Commissioner to republish the final results which would reflect the votes from VALCO Phase Two for the organizing secretary position.
Also, the Association also received the mandate to go ahead with the swearing in as well as the handover processes in a bid to set her on track for the mantle of new leadership, which hopefully would spur her to higher dimensions of growth.
By: Kojo Agyeman/citifmonline.com/Ghana
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