The
Supreme Court of Ghana, in dismissing an application filed by lawyers for the
petitioner in the election petition hearing which was seeking to inspect the
documents of the 1st Respondent, the Electoral Commission (EC), said John
Dramani Mahama has access to all the documents of the EC in respect of the
petition.
The justices said on Wednesday, February 3 that
proceedings in court so far show that the petitioner has copies of the
documents which form the basis of the case before them.
According to the apex court, the duplicates of the
documents which are in possession of the petitioner, are as good as the
originals.
In
dismissing the application, Chief Justice Anin Yeboah, who read the ruling on
behalf of the justices, said “the proceedings so far show that the petitioner
has copies of the documents which are the reasons for this application. We are
of the view that no proper case has been before us to warrant the exercise of
our discretion in favour of the applicant.
“Order
29 of CI 47, which is the basis for this application, should not be read in
isolation, it should be read in conjunction with Rule 11 of the said Order.”
He
added that Section 166 of the Evidence Act 323 of 1975 “makes it clear that a
duplicate of a document is admissible to the same extent as the original unless
a genuine question is raised as to the authenticity of the duplicate. No issue
has been raised against the authenticity of the document in possession of the
applicant.”
Lead
Counsel for the petitioner, Tsatsu Tsikata, on Tuesday filed an application in
court to inspect the EC’s documents.
The documents they were seeking to inspect included the original
constituency presidential election result collation forms for all
constituencies, constituency presidential election results summary sheet,
regional presidential election summary sheets for all regions, and the
declaration of the presidential results form.
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