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Dominic Ayine, Member of Parliament(MP) for Bolgatanga East Constituency in the Upper East Region says the fact that the Supreme Court has reduced 'five key issues to be determined' to just one "smacks of a predetermined agenda to rule against the petitioner".

The Supreme Court, on Tuesday, in a unanimous decision dismissed former President John Mahama's motion to reopen his case.

Mr Mahama sought to reopen his case to enable his lawyers subpoena Madam Jean Mensa to appear before the court and testify as a “hostile witness”.

But the panel, in its ruling delivered by Chief Justice Anin Yeboah said, "we accordingly refuse the application and proceed without any hesitation to dismiss it".

This was after an earlier ruling on February 11.

Reacting to this at a press briefing, Dr Dominc Ayine said, "In our view the court was wrong; in our view the reasons of the court were based upon wrong legal premises but . . . we are bound by what it has said".

Single issue to be determined

Dr Ayine also expressed dissatisfaction at the fact that the Supreme Court claim "there is only one issue to be determined".

" . . these are germane issues under the constitution of Ghana and to reduce the petition into a single issue petition is rather unfortunate and smacks of a predetermined agenda to rule against the petitioner in this matter," he said.

According to him, "The Supreme Court asked itself a question which we deem was a wrong question and answered that question; it said why does the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission need to account to the people of Ghana when she is not a party to the suit . . . now you would recall that counsel (Tsatsu Tsikata) made it very clear that one of the reasons why we are in court is because of the unconstitutional conduct of Mrs. Jean Adukwei Mensa as the returning officer under the constitution and it is not true that there is only one issue that needs to be determined in this matter".

"I am surprised that the Supreme Court itself, having set down five key issues to be determined is now reducing the issues to one; which is whether and the extent to which the evidence that we have led shows that no one got more than 50 percent of the votes in accordance with article 63 of the constitution, but we have made it abundantly clear in the petition that there were a number of infractions; we’re contesting even the constitutionality of the declaration that was made. We are saying that she violated article 23 of the constitution . . . these are germane issues under the constitution of Ghana and to reduce the petition into a single issue petition is rather unfortunate and smacks of a predetermined agenda to rule against the petitioner in this matter".

He further insisted that, "the court by this decision has done the people of this country a great disservice in the sense that Ghanaians are interested in knowing the truth".