The Member of Parliament (MP) for Bolgatanga East Constituency and a member of the John Mahama’s legal team of the 2020 election petition, Dr. Dominic Akuritinga Ayine has said the Supreme Court Justices who heard the 2020 election petition did a great disservice to Ghana.

The Bolgatanga East legislator expressed his disappointment in the justices of the Apex Court of Ghana for certain decisions they took during the hearing of the election petition brought before the court by the flagbearer of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Dramani Mahama.

He stated that the failure of the court to allow the first respondent (Jane Adukwei Mensah) to answer the interrogatories or mount the witness box to answer questions regarding the conduct of the election sets a bad precedence for any electoral commissioner to declare a particular candidate winner and refuse to mount the witness box to answer questions when sued.

Dr. Ayine who made this comment in a personality profile edition of Daybreak Upper East show on A1 Radio on Friday April 23, 2021 opined that of the decisions taken by the highest court of the land during the hearing of the petition were wrong.

“The whole idea of shielding her from cross examination was wrong," he said.

"The court, I think went really wrong and did this country an injustice by shielding a public official who has conducted a public business from been cross examined on the business that she has conducted.

"It means that any electoral commissioner can declare a person president of the republic and decide that when they sue, she is not going to mount the box. That is dangerous! In any decent democracy, this would never have happened.”

The astute lawyer added that he has a lot of respect for the Supreme Court but he think what they did was really wrong and they did this country a disservice with respect to shielding her from being cross examined and getting her to refuse to produce documents.

Dr Ayine said the position of the law is that any citizen can challenge the declaration of a president-elect and so if the petitioner was an ordinary citizen and not John Mahama did the Supreme Court expect that individual go round the whole country to gather pink sheet before coming to court when the Electoral Commission as a public institution can produce them.

He added that it is the duty of the court to aid in arriving at the truth that is why there is interrogatories and discovery of documents and the court decided to throw all these away is quite strange.

The astute legal luminary wondered what will happen in the future but believed the court did a very great dis-service to the country not to John Dramani Mahama.