NDC Can’t Stop Akufo-Addo’s Swearing-In – Samson Lardy Anyenini
Private legal practitioner, Samson Lardy Anyenini has proffered that the swearing-in of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo as president on January 7, 2021 will happen despite the petition by the National Democratic Congress at the Supreme Court of the country.
According to him, precedence as witnessed in 2012 shows that the swearing-in of the president will happen irrespective of the petition.
He, however, noted that in the event that the NDC wins the petition, the Supreme Court will make provisions for how the country will be administered.
Samson Anyenini asserted that should the relief being sought by the NDC be granted, there will be no ‘president-elect’.
“As we know from the 2013 petition, a President has to be sworn-in. They have to do their work. If [the NDC] is able to make their case and they win, then they (the Supreme Court) will make the necessary orders to overturn the circumstance”.
However, he added that unless the NDC “files an application to seek to injunct the president from being sworn-in, which is an impossibility, advisedly, [as it] is etched in the Constitution, it is almost impracticable to do anything about it”, he said on Joy News.
John Dramani Mahama, the flagbearer of the National Democratic filed a petition at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, December 30, 2020 praying the court to declare the result of the December 7 presidential election ‘null and void’.
John Mahama stated in the petition that the declaration of Nana Akufo-Addo as winner of the polls is a slap in the face of the constitution hence the need for the apex court to squash it and order a re-run.
Mahama seeks among others, “a declaration from the Supreme Court to the effect that, the purported declaration of the results of the 2020 Presidential Election on the 9th day of December 2020 is unconstitutional, null and void and of no effect whatsoever.”
He is also praying the court to issue “an order annulling of the declaration of President-Elect instrument, 2020 (C.I 135)” and another “order of injunction restraining the 2nd Respondent (Nana Akufo-Addo) from holding himself out as President-elect”.