Stephen Kwaku Asare a US-based Ghanaian law professor has stated that the decision by the Electoral Commission (EC) to seek a review at the Supreme Court on a ruling to reinstate presidential candidate of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) is a complete waste of time.
He observes that the EC also failed to use the right court in seeking the review in the face of the lack of merit in the entire case and wants the commission to stop unnecessarily wasting the time of Ghanaians describing their conduct as reckless.
“Their actions have grown from negligence to recklessness. They are undermining their set rules and need to be advised to take the interest of the country at heart”, he told Lantam Papanko on the Ultimate Breakfast Show.
“The Supreme Court’s supervisory jurisdiction is not triggered merely because a party wants finality. A party must show a fundamental error on the face of the record, jurisdictional defect or denial of natural justice to successfully trigger it. In effect, the Court of Appeal is not an Inferior Court whose jurisdiction can be routinely ousted by a party dissatisfied with a high court judgment.
Accordingly, if the EC wants to waste time, my advice to the Commission is to do it the right way. It must launch an appeal with the Court of Appeal and then file a motion at the Supreme Court to have the appellate case transferred to it”.
He advised the EC to swallow its pride and understand their job, stop needless controversies and focus on delivering incident free elections to Ghanaians and not trivial issues.
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