The Electoral Commission has finally accepted the nomination fees of the Convention People’s Party after the party failed to meet a 12:00 noon deadline Monday.
The decision was taken by officials of the Commission after a short meeting.
There were indications the party was going to be disqualified from contesting this year’s presidential and parliamentary elections after it failed to satisfy all the legal requirements regarding the December 7 polls.
It had by 12:00 noon when processes to accept the fees had closed, failed to present a bank draft of GHC50,000 for its presidential nominee and GHC10,000 each for all its parliamentary nominees.
Chairman of the party, Prof. Edmund Delle had gone to the EC’s headquarters Monday ahead of the deadline to inform the Chairperson that the party officials were still going through processes to get the bank draft for onward submission to the Commission.
By 12:00 noon when the EC chairperson, Ms Charlotte Osei declared the processes closed, party officials had still not showed up with the bank drafts.
Officials of the EC then went into a meeting to decide whether to accept the bank drafts of the party should it present it later on. A decision was reached by the EC officials to accept the fees when it was later presented.
A total of 17 persons filed to contest in the elections on December 7. Fifteen of them are representing political parties while two are seeking to contest as independent.
The nominees submitted their forms on September 29 and 30 at the Electoral Commissions headquarters in Accra without the required GHC50,000 fee due to a court action that restrained the EC from collecting same.
The interlocutory application for injunction was instituted by the Progressive People’s Party to prevent the Commission from receiving the amount in bank draft until the final determination of a substantive matter challenging the legality of the amount.
But the Accra High Court on Friday, October 7 dismissed the interlocutory application, prompting the EC to demand the fees. All nominees were subsequently directed to submit the amount on Monday, October 10.
By Stephen Kwabena Effah|3news.com|Ghana