By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, a High Court in Ghana’s capital, Accra, on Friday dismissed an application barring the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) from holding its presidential and parliamentary primaries scheduled to hold on Saturday, May 13, 2023.
The court struck out the application following the withdrawal of the case by an aspirant, Dr Kwabena Duffour, who had asked the court to put the primaries on hold till issues relating to the list of delegates to participate in the exercise were resolved.
When the case came up for hearing on Friday, Dr. Duffuor through his counsels informed the High Court of their decision to withdraw the matter.
The leadership of the NDC has been pushing for an out of court settlement.
National Chairman of the party, Johnson Asiedu Nketiah says attempts to meet Dr. Kwabena Duffuor and his campaign team to resolve issues proved difficult.
In an interview with local media earlier, Johnson Aseidu Nketiah said, “I have been trying to get people around the table to do that, but I haven’t succeeded completely, but we are still working along that line, so we have party and court processes underway. But we would have liked that the party’s processes to be exhausted first before the court process comes in. Be as it may, we are running the party’s process along the court process”.
Dr. Kwabena Duffuor, one of the three presidential aspirants on the platform of NDC had on Tuesday filed an injunction restraining the party from going ahead with the election.
The Electoral Commission said it would not deploy officials to supervise the NDC elections due to the pending legal challenge.
The withdrawal of the case Clears the way for former President John Dramani Mahama, Dr. Duffuor, and former Kumasi Mayor Kojo Bonsu to battle for the NDC’s presidential slot on May 13.
Thousands of NDC delegates are expected to cast their votes at polling stations across the country’s 16 regions to elect the party’s presidential and parliamentary candidates.
