General News of Sunday, 8 September 2013

Source: peacefmonline

Election Petition: Justice was not served - Egbert Faibille

A member of the legal team of the petitioners in the just-ended election petition, Lawyer Egbert Faibille, has posited that the 2012 general elections was riddled with defects and is dissatisfied with the nine Supreme Court Justices ruling that President John Dramani Mahama’s legitimacy should be upheld.

Making his submissions on Peace FM’s flagship programme “Kokrokoo”, Lawyer Egbert Fabille strongly opined that the Judges should have provided the basis for their ruling and also should have established whether or not there were violations during the elections as claimed by the petitioners.

In his view, since the nine-member panel presided over by Justice William Atuguba read out their verdicts without any detailed explanations, justice in the “outcome of the election [petition] was not served…”

He believes strongly that the 2012 polls was “very defective”.

“Elections are the heart of democracy. They are the instruments for people to choose leaders and hold them accountable. At the same time, elections are a core public function, upon which all other government responsibilities depend. If elections are defective, the entire democratic system is at risk,” he quoted, stating categorically that “the 2012 were very, very defective, palpably so.”