Former Attorney General and member of former president John Mahama’s legal team, Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong, has expressed disagreement over the Supreme Court’s ruling today that dismiss an application filed by Mr. Mahama to review its decision to disallow him from asking the Electoral Commission (EC) some 12 questions.
The apex court on Tuesday, January 19, 2021, dismissed the petitioner’s application for interrogatories.
Mr. Mahama, again, through his lawyers filed for the review of the ruling; but after hours of argument between the lawyers from both the petitioners and respondents, the court refused the request for review.
Interacting with newsman in Accra after Thursday’s hearing, Mrs. Marietta Brew opined that the Supreme Court has not treated Mr. Mahama fairly in its ruling on the interrogatories.
According to her, “What is damning is that when you listen to the ruling of the court the only reason they gave is that the rules do not allow for it. So if the rules do not allow for it why has it been allowed in the past? And so we think that the petitioner is not being treated fairly in this.”
“You all heard the very superior arguments of our council; he said there were fundamental errors. When did Jean Mensa {the Chairperson of the EC} for example discover that she had made errors? What was the process by which she corrected those errors? Who did she consult in correcting those errors? Did she consult the agents or the candidates? And so we disagree with the court. The petitioner has been disallowed a right to fair hearing.”
Again, Mrs. Marietta Brew explained that “We referred to cases which said that if a petitioner on grounds of expedition is denied the right to serve interrogatory, that is a denial of a right to fair hearing. The refusals of our application are not fair to our petitioner. And in light of the past and what is happening now, we disagree with the rulings of the Supreme Court.”
“Unfortunately, that’s their decision, and there is no way we can do, we will be in court tomorrow to start our case. We are not withdrawing our case; we will continue with the case.”
The apex Court of the land has adjourned the case to tomorrow, Friday January 29, 2021.
Source: A1Radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Elijah Beyeni Yenibey|Ghana
