We won’t retreat on disqualified presidential aspirants – EC
Tuesday 11th October , 2016 6:05 am
EC Chair, Charlotte Osei
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The Electoral Commission has said that it will not consider appeals from any of the political parties disqualified from this year’s presidential elections.
The Deputy Communications Director of the Electoral Commission (EC), Yusif Ayuba, in an interview on Citi FM’s Campaign Trail programme on Monday, argued that the Commission followed due procedure in vetting and announcing the status of the respective political parties aspiring for presidency in the upcoming general elections.
He said, “we made it clear that they must make sure that they meet all the requirements in law to be able to qualify to become candidates. For the forms that they submitted to the Electoral Commission, we went through it and we realized a number anomalies. Those who brought the forms early we notified them to come and pick them and make sure that they do the correction and resubmit them within the stipulated time in law.”
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“The Electoral Commission did its homework well. We did due diligence to the information that they provided and based on the requirement of law, we disqualified persons who did not meet those requirements,” he added.
When asked whether the Commission will consider appeals from any of the disqualified political parties, Ayuba responded in the negative saying “why should we consider an appeal from any of the political parties? It is within the time frame; that is 29th and 30th of September, that is when you should submit your nomination forms, after 30th September, you cannot submit any corrected nomination forms.”
The Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Charlotte Osei, on Monday announced that, 13 presidential aspirants including the Progressive People’s Party’s Papa Kwesi Nduom, People’s National Convention’s Edward Mahama and Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings of the National Democratic Party, had been disqualified from the 2016 presidential elections.
According to the EC boss, the parties failed to meet the electoral requirements in filling their nomination forms after vetting them.
Some offences of the disqualified persons included suspected forged signatures, subscription by double-registered persons, and failure to endorse some pages of the nomination documents by the aspirants.
Officials of some of the affected political parties have given indications they will seek redress in court to ensure their flagbearers are reinstated in the presidential race.
However the Electoral Commission is certain it did due diligence in rejecting the nomination of all the 13 aspirants.
It argued that it had given enough time to the various candidates to ensure their documents were appropriately completed before the submission deadline on Monday.
