Chairman of the Electoral Commission has called the bluff of aggrieved presidential candidates threatening to go to court over their disqualification.
Mrs Charlotte Osei says the affected parties and candidates are free to go to court if they feel hard done by their disqualification.
Some 13 presidential aspirants are gnashing their teeth after the Electoral Commission shockingly announced their disqualification, Monday.
The aspirants were said to have breached portions of the C. I. 94, the law regulating the conduct of the 2016 elections.
According to the EC, the nomination forms by the disqualified aspirants were riddled with fraud, negligence or a combination of the two.
In the case of the Progressive People’s Party, one of the subscribers in the Central Region, Richard Aseda was said to be the same person who endorsed Dr Nduom in the Volta Region but with a different signature.
For the NDP’s candidate Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, one of her endorsers was said to have engaged in multiple registrations. Yet in the case of the APC and PNC, their candidates were both disqualified because the same subscriber endorsed for both candidates.
Apart from Akua Donkor who is thanking God for her disqualification, most of the disqualified candidates are livid and threatening court action against the EC.
Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom has requested a five minute discussion with the EC chair to correct what he said are administrative and clerical errors.
He said failure by the EC to grant him audience and to rescind its decision to disqualify him would lead to a litigation in court.
The UFP, DFP have all sworn to go to court over the matter.
But the EC is unfazed. Addressing journalists in the Northern Region the Chair of the EC, Charlotte Osei, said her outfit followed due process in disqualifying the aspirants.
“You want to take time to read the reasons for the disqualification and study the law and see whether the actions are in line with the law or not. If they are not, surely the courts are there.
“We enforce the law as the law is, as passed by Parliament, not as we want it to be.
“The law says one voter cannot endorse more than one candidate. That is the law. The MPs we all voted into Parliament passed that law. We work with that law,”.
Mrs Charlotte Osei dismissed assertion the EC was to help the candidates clean up their error-ridden forms. She said the duty of the EC is to enforce the law.
“Political parties have access to the register. If candidates want the register, they have access to the register to do their own checks,” she said.
She added persons who want to be president have no excuse for their inability to fill forms and to respect the due process of law in filling their forms.
Charlotte Osei said the affected candidates have rights of protest and they are free to express that right in every shape or form they deem fit.
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