Ghana’s Electoral Commission has been cleared to collect the controversial GHC50,000 nomination fee from persons seeking to contest this year’s December 7 presidential election.

The Progressive People’s Party, which is challenging the legality of the Commission’s decision to charge the whopping amount, filed an interim application to restrain the EC from going ahead to collect the amount until the Accra High Court rules on the matter.

With the exception of the PPP, the Commission rejected the GHC50,000 filing fees for presidential and GHC10,000 for parliamentary aspirants who submitted theirs nomination forms between September 29 and 30, 2016 across the country

The EC had said it rejected the fees, which were in bankers draft, from the aspirants because of a pending court case filed by Progressive People’s Party on last Wednesday.

Read: Presidential candidates to pay GH¢50,000; aspiring MPs GH¢10,000

However, the Accra High Court presided over by Justice Daniel Mensah dismissed the application Friday morning when it came up for hearing. This was after lawyers for the EC and the PPP had advance their arguments for and against the motion.

The court has fixed Monday, October 10 to give reasons for the dismissal of the application on.

Substantive suit

Meanwhile, in the substantive case which is yet to come up for hearing, the PPP is claiming “the filing fees is arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable,” arguing Regulation 45 of C.I. 94 which gives the EC the power to charge the fees is discriminatory, arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable.

“That the entire C.I. 94 does not contain the appropriate relevant provisions that meet the intendment of Article 296 of the 1992 Constitution.

“A declaration that the proper instrument within the meaning of the relevant laws of the Republic of Ghana, in charging a deposit or fees for conducting a presidential or parliamentary election, by the Electoral Commission, is a statutory instrument and not constitutional instrument.

“An order directed at the defendants to desist from collecting and or receiving the said deposit or fees for the conduct of the 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections until the appropriate statutory instruments have been passed in accordance with appropriate legal rights.”

By Stephen Kwabena Effah|3news.com|Ghana

Twitter @steviekgh_TV3