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Thursday 29 August 2013

Ghana : Supreme Court upholds John Mahama's win

Ghana's Supreme Court on Thursday upheld President John Dramani Mahama's win in elections last year, dismissing an appeal by the opposition to annul the President's narrow victory in disputed election.

By Newsfromafrica

Ghana's Supreme Court on Thursday upheld President John Dramani Mahama's win in elections last year, dismissing an appeal by the opposition to annul the President's narrow victory in disputed election.

On December 7th, 2012, Ghanaians thronged to polling stations to cast their votes in a presidential and parliamentary plebiscite. On December 9th, the chairman of the electoral commission, Dr. Afari Gyan, declared John Dramani Mahama as first round winner with 50.70% of total votes cast and Nana Akuffo Addo second with 47.74% of total votes cast.

Mr Mahama was inaugurated in January.

The Opposition party, NPP went to court and had alleged that Mr Mahama won the election fraudulently, a charge his rulling NDC party denied.They asked the court to scrap some four million votes, alleging the result was tampered with to guarantee Mr Mahama victory in the first round of the election.

However, the court ruled that he had been "validly elected" after beating the NPP's Nana Akufo-Addo by 50.7% to 47.7% in the December 2012 election.

"The first respondent (Mahama) was validly elected and the petition is therefore dismissed," presiding judge William Atuguba said, reading from the verdict issued by the nine-justice panel.

Nearly 30,000 security officers were deployed across Ghana to prevent an outbreak of violence after the court verdict.

Mr Akufo-Addo had previously pledged to respect the court's decision.

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