Zanetor jubilates over court victory

The Parliamentary candidate-elect of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) for the Korle Klottey constituency in Accra, Dr Zanetor Rawlings has hailed the decision of the High Court to throw out an application challenging her election in last November’s parliamentary primaries.

Four executive members of the constituency had applied to the Accra High Court praying for the annulment of the election results which saw Dr Rawlings emerge as the winner.

The plaintiffs, Mr Joseph Botchway and the three others had argued that Dr Rawlings was not a registered voter in the constituency and therefore did not qualify to have been in the contest.

They had applied for the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission to be subpoenaed to prove if Dr Rawlings was a registered voter.

However, the court on Friday dismissed the application and said the plaintiffs did not demonstrate in any way that their rights had been violated or would be violated if Dr Rawlings went ahead to contest this year’s parliamentary elections on the ticket of the NDC.

Responding to the victory, Dr Rawlings said: “I think that we’ve proven that democracy does work and we’ve proven that the courts actually work.”

“The people voted, they spoke, they chose who they wanted and it would have been a real travesty of justice for the court to actually overturn the choice of the people and I’m very happy that we’ve actually come this far and now work goes on,” she said.

Dr Rawlings won the Korle Klottey parliamentary primaries of the NDC after garnering 2,403 votes to beat the incumbent Member of Parliament, Nii Armah Ashitey.

Her votes represented 62.22 per cent of the total votes cast. Nii Ashitey polled 1,348 votes, representing 34.90 per cent of votes cast. A third contestant, John Coleman, polled only 100 votes, representing 2.5 per cent of the votes.

As the eldest daughter of former President Jerry John Rawlings, her membership of the NDC became the centre of discussions among party functionaries in the constituency from the very first day she made public her desire to contest the primary.

Although the controversy surrounding her membership was put to rest, she explained that she had been a member of the party since the 1990s.

She was, on October 8, 2015, cleared by the leadership of the ruling NDC to contest the parliamentary primary.