THE Presidential Election Tribunal (PET) in Abuja yesterday dismissed an application by the Hope Democratic Party (HDP) to re-activate its petition on the ground that since the party withdrew its petition on its own, the tribunal was incompetent to re-list it.        

  The dismissal of the petition thus leaves only the petition of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) as the only one challenging the election of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.   In reaching its decision to throw out the HDP’s application to relist its petition, the presiding Justice and President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Ayo Isa Salami held that the petitioner failed to adduce credible evidence to persuade the court to set aside its order striking out the petition.

The court had on May 27, 2011 struck out the party’s petition following an application by the party’s counsel. Mr. E.G. Ogar, to withdraw the petition.

Ogar had told the court that because the party had congratulated Jonathan as the winner of the election, it was no longer interested in pursuing the petition.

But in a dramatic twist a few days after the petition was struck out, the party filed an application, praying for an order of the tribunal to relist the petition, claiming that it was blackmailed into withdrawing it.

The respondents to the petition, President Goodluck Jonathan, his deputy, Namadi Sambo and the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) opposed the application to relist the petition.

After counsel had exchanged arguments, the court then adjourned to yesterday for ruling on whether to relist or not.

Delivering the judgement of the court, Justice Salami said that the court had become functius officio and therefore was without jurisdiction to relist the case. The only line of action opened to the petitioner, the court noted, was to appeal to the Supreme Court.

Salami said that HDP had not shown any reason why the court must set aside its order striking out the petition.

According to him,  the reasons given by the party to persuade the court to relist the petition were irrelevant and of no consequence in law.

He described the application to relist as frivolous, vexatious and abuse of court process.

Justice Salami stated that the petitioners did not deny the fact that the lawyer who moved the application to withdraw their petition was  their lawyer.

Reacting to HDP’s claim that there was procedural irregularity in the manner in which the court’s struck out its petition, Justice Salami said that the party benefited from the irregularity and therefore could not be heard to complain thereafter.

He said: “A party who waived its right to a procedure could not be heard later to complain that the court did not follow the said procedure.”

In its petition, HDP had asked the court to nullify the presidential election and set aside INEC’s declaration of Jonathan as the winner of the election.

HDP said that the conduct of the presidential election did not comply with the Electoral Act 2010 as amended and the 1999 Constitution.

The party claimed that over 30 million votes allegedly cast for its presidential candidate, Chief Ambrose Owuru were diverted to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

He asked that these 30 million votes diverted to the PDP be returned to him and he be declared the winner of the election.

-Guardian

Posted by admin on Jun 27 2011. Filed under Goodluck Jonathan (2010-present), Presidency. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry