Election 2024: PPP heads to court over disqualification

The Progressive People’s Party (PPP) is set to challenge its disqualification from the 2024 presidential election in court. This decision follows the Electoral Commission’s (EC) announcement on Friday that 11 presidential aspirants, including the PPP’s Kofi Asamoah-Siaw, have been disqualified.

Despite this setback, 13 candidates have been approved to run in the upcoming elections scheduled for December 7. According to EC Chairperson Jean Mensa, all candidates were allowed to correct any errors found on their nomination forms. However, while some complied, others submitted their forms without making the necessary corrections.

In response to the EC’s decision, PPP National Chairman Nana Ofori Owusu argued that the Commission did not provide their party with a genuine opportunity to amend the mistakes on their nomination forms.

“It is gross incompetence and it is a form of violating my natural right to due process. We are going to court without any ambiguity. We know that 2016 is the PPP that took the electoral commission to court, that reinstated all the people they had been kicked out. A similar thing will happen in 2024 because they have not learnt,” he stated in an interview with Accra-based Citi News.

Mr Owusu accused the electoral body of gross incompetence in the way the issue was handled.

“It is a grave injustice and it’s also sad for Ghana. It exposes the incompetence of Jean Mensa the head of the Electoral Commission. It is de’ja vu, it happened in 2016. The same error they committed in 2016. That the court’s revenge is the same error they have committed now.

“You know the PPP submitted all the necessary documentation to the EC within the stipulated time frame. Then the EC replied to the Progressive People’s Party facing exactly what they wanted us to correct. On the form, they listed pages for us to go and correct,” he added.

Mr Owusu continued, “We corrected these pages and resubmitted back to the Electoral Commission. When we submitted to the electoral commission, they have been incommunicado from the time that we submitted the document to them until today. Now, today we only hear when other colleagues were saying that they have been invited to the electoral commission at 04:00 p.m. but we were not informed of anything of the light.

“So quickly, in the morning, we wrote a letter to the electoral commission seeking an explanation as to why our name was not part of the names that they had listed. Around 1:14 via WhatsApp, the electoral commission responded to our request upon the request that they brought, all that they said was that they regretted there were some errors in the document. You see the law of natural justice.”