Election petition was useful - Ato Dadzie

Spokesperson for the respondents in the just ended election petition Nana Ato Dadzie has said on Tarzan’s Take on Multi TV that the eight months of resilience and patience shown by Ghanaians for the land mark presidential petition to run its full course at the Supreme Court, was worth it and “must be commended”.

Juxtaposing the case of Ghana against that of Kenya in which the election petition suit was filed within seven days as against twenty one days, Nana Ato Dadzie insisted the “level of justice Ghanaians were expecting” following the filling of the suit presented a peculiar situation which could not have been taken for granted.

He believes it is this period of waiting for justice to be done, that has informed the prevailing responses to Supreme Court verdict, from the general public and interested parties. This, he said, was the reason why even though some people weren’t so happy about the outcome, they have decided “to accept it somehow”.

He said the eight months has set the precedence for future cases of such nature. “Now the rules have been set out and we know what to do”, he said.

Moving forward, he admits things could have been done quicker but we must avoid unhealthy comparisons.

Nana Ato Dadzie was of the view that though the Inter-party Advisory Committee (IPAC) had done “a wonderful job in the past, what we spent eight months doing in court. We could have spent six weeks doing at IPAC”.

He added: “It is okay to go to court to test the essential issues of evidence”, but felt most of the things as spelt out by Justice Dotse in his judgment “could have been resolved internally”.

He, therefore, advocated for proper training and recruitment of persons with the requisite skills and capacity to help operationalize Ghana’s electoral process.

He maintained that the eight months of election petition was what revealed that “we have a system which is deficient from below and needs to be worked on”.

Nana Ato Dadzie was contributing to a discussion on "Beyond the Verdict II, Never Again: Electoral Reforms and Constitutional Changes" on Tarzan’s Take on JOY NEWS Channel on Multi-TV, hosted by Dr. Charles Wereko-Brobby.