Thursday, November 3, 2016

We are happy disqualified candidates went to court - Charlotte Osei

The Electoral Commission (EC) boss Charlotte Osei says her outfit is happy that the disqualified presidential aspirants "went to court to challenge the decision and not to the streets."

In an interview with BBC and former Joy FM Anchor, Akwasi Sarpong on Thursday, Mrs. Osei insisted that the commission acted in accordance with the law.

"It is proper for them to go to court because...it is a rule of law, you are not happy with the decisions of the commission, you go to court, you don't go to the streets," she noted.

About five out of some 13 presidential candidates who were disqualified by the Electoral Commission are currently in court to quash the decision.
An Accra High Court on Friday quashed the decision of the commission to disqualify one of the aspirants, Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom who represents the Progressive People's Party. It ordered that Dr. Nduom be given the opportunity to correct the error on his nomination papers which formed the basis for his disqualification.

The others, including the All People's Congress (APC) 2016 flagbearer Hassan Ayariga, People's National Convention (PNC) presidential candidate Dr. Edward Mahama, National Democratic Party (NDP) presidential candidate Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings and IPP Candidate Kofi Akpaloo have argued that they were not given the chance to rectify the anomalies on the forms.

But according to the EC, some of the candidates were given opportunities to rectify as many as 30 errors on their nomination forms.

"There was one candidate where we found about thirty commissions, they were pointed out to him, he corrected...even the former First Lady there were some omissions that we saw apparently on the document and we pointed out."

She said some omissions which led to the disqualification of some of the candidates were "only detected after the deadline for the submission of the nomination forms", hence, the commission acted in accordance with the law.



AEP

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