An Accra High Court has dismissed an application filed by Nana Akua Afriyie, the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) 2024 parliamentary candidate for Ablekuma North, which sought to stop a planned parliamentary rerun in 19 polling stations within the constituency scheduled for July 11, 2025.
The presiding judge, Justice Ali Baba Abature, described the motion for an interim injunction as “unmeritorious,” ruling that the balance of convenience weighed in favour of the Electoral Commission’s (EC) constitutional responsibility to ensure representation for the people of Ablekuma North.
Afriyie’s legal team had argued that the EC’s decision to rerun voting in the 19 polling stations violated a High Court ruling issued on January 4, 2025. That ruling directed the EC to complete the collation of results from 62 polling stations and declare a winner for the December 7, 2024, parliamentary election.
Appearing in court, NPP counsel Gary Nimako insisted that following the January ruling, the EC had publicly acknowledged—through a January 27 press release and a subsequent briefing to Parliament by Deputy EC Chair Dr. Bossman Asare—that only three polling stations remained uncollated.
Nimako contended that the EC’s decision to rerun elections in 19 polling stations not only contradicted its earlier position but also amounted to a challenge to the authority of the High Court.
He maintained that all polling station results, commonly referred to as “pink sheets,” had already been certified by both party agents and presiding officers on election day. “A rerun can only occur if there is a tie,” Nimako argued, citing Regulation 42 of the Public Elections Regulations, 2020 (C.I. 127), which provides for a rerun only in cases of vote equality—something the EC has not alleged.
Afriyie’s legal team further submitted that if the EC had encountered difficulties executing the court’s order, it should have returned to the High Court for clarification, rather than opting for what they described as a “contemptuous” rerun.
Though the EC was not present in court—as the application was filed ex parte—Justice Abature questioned whether the applicant had sufficiently demonstrated that the results could legally be collated without further verification. He noted that counsel failed to provide a clear legal basis under C.I. 127 to support that claim.
In delivering his ruling, Justice Abature affirmed the EC’s constitutional authority to conduct elections and emphasised the need to avoid prolonged delays in securing parliamentary representation for the constituency.
“After a careful and painstaking reading of the applicant’s motion paper, affidavit in support, statement of case as filed, as well as the supplementary affidavit… the application for injunction against the respondent is dismissed as unmeritorious,” he declared.
He added that the EC, as a public institution, would be in a position to pay damages should Afriyie succeed in her substantive legal challenge.
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