Petition to remove Jean Mensa: Pages in copy forwarded from Presidency to Chief Justice goes missing

SALL without parliamentary representation in Ghana’s 8th Parliament

Presidency forwards petition against Jean Mensa to Chief Justice

It has emerged that some pages contained in the petition seeking the removal of the Electoral Commission chairperson and her deputies have gone missing after the petition was forwarded from the Office of the President to the Chief Justice.

In a Facebook post sighted by GhanaWeb, one of the petitioners, Oliver Barker-Vormawor, disclosed that the said pages, which are four in number, have the most critical arguments in their petition asking for the removal of the EC chairperson and her deputies.

However, he confirmed that the Chief Justice had granted them (petitioners) the opportunity to submit the missing pages in the document.

“We have just been informed by the Office of the Chief Justice that the pages 9, 10, 11 and 12, which contain our most critical arguments, were missing from the petition that was received from the Presidency.

“We acknowledge the notice from the Office of the Chief Justice and are grateful for the opportunity to supply the missing pages,” he wrote.

In a subsequent post, Barker-Vormawor, one of the lead conveners of #FixTheCountry – a pressure group, affirmed that their petition filed at the office of the president on Monday, January 10, 2022, did contain the missing pages.

According to him, their evidence is a duplicate copy of the petition that has a stamp of the Presidency on it.

“We printed a duplicate copy of the petition, which was stamped at the Presidency. We just checked. The copy we have contains the missing pages. We have no idea what went wrong with the master copy. Anyway, we will be sending a new copy to the Chief Justice tomorrow,” he added.

Earlier, Oliver Barker-Vormawor, in a Facebook update, indicated that the office of the president had written to the petitioners informing them that their petition had been forwarded to the Chief Justice for consideration.

In accordance with the 1992 Constitution of Ghana, the Chief Justice is to set up a committee to commence impeachment processes against the EC commissioner to see whether a prima facie case can be established based on the arguments and evidence of the petitioners.

Background

#FixTheCountry campaigners have filed a petition for the removal of the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Jean Mensa and other officers of the Commission in connection with the denial of the right of the people Santrokofi, Akpafu, Likpe, and Lolobi(SALL) to vote for parliamentary representation.

The petition, according to Oliver Barker-Vormawor is in accordance with Article 146 of the 1992 constitution and is signed by 46 members of the #FixTheCountry movement.

Addressing journalists on the matter, Barker-Vormawor maintained that there is sufficient grounds to push for a prima facie case against the EC.

“Our decision to seek the removal of the EC is based on our belief that the fact of the disenfranchisement, as well as the indolence of the Electoral Commission(EC) in taking steps to remedy this constitutional breach in itself, rises to the threshold of stated misbehaviour and incompetence that Article 146 requires for the removal of officers of the Electoral Commission”

“It’s our hope that if the President receives this that they treat this with dispatch as it has done previously and that he submits this to the Chief Justice who must then go on and perform the constitutional duty of determining whether or not the fact as we would lay them out amounts to a prima facie case for the impeachment of the officers so named in the petition,” he said.

Eligible voters within areas in the newly created district; namely Santrokofi, Akpafu, Likpe, and Lolobi, were only allowed to take part in the presidential election of 2020 but did not vote in the parliamentary election because as per the directive of the Electoral Commission.

According to the petitioners seeking the removal of the EC heads, the denial of the people of SALL to vote and subsequent denial of their right to representation in the 8th Parliament is a breach of their fundamental rights.