An Accra High Court has thrown out a suit filed by the Progressive People’s Party (PPP), challenging the Electoral Commission’s filing fees for aspirants of the 2016 polls, which it considered very high.
The party has, however, stated that it might appeal the case after the December 7 polls.
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The PPP filed an interlocutory injunction seeking to restrain the Electoral Commission (EC) from going ahead with the receipt of filing fees from presidential and parliamentary candidates a day before the date scheduled for filing.
But at the hearing in court on October 7, 2016, the trial judge, Justice Daniel Mensah denied the application for the injunction and gave the EC the go-ahead to collect the filing fee.
The PPP's earlier injunction prevented the EC from receiving the filing fees of the various parliamentary and presidential hopefuls though it strangely accepted the filing fee of the PPP flagberer, Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom, who was represented by the party’s Chairman, Nii Allotey Brew Hammond.
The party pursued a declaration that Regulation 45 of C.I. 94 is discriminatory, arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable.
“That the entire C.I. 94 does not contain the appropriate relevant provisions that meet the intendment of Article 296 of the 1992 Constitution.”
The other reliefs sought included: “A declaration that the proper instrument within the meaning of the relevant laws of the Republic of Ghana, in charging a deposit or fees for conducting a presidential or parliamentary election, by the Electoral Commission, is a statutory instrument and not constitutional instrument. An order directed at the defendants to desist from collecting and or receiving the said deposit or fees for the conduct of the 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections until the appropriate statutory instruments have been passed in accordance with appropriate legal rights.”