Effect of a later republication of the results in the Gazette on the time for petitioning
To compute the statutory period from 6th January, 2025 instead of 24th December, 2024 would lead to an untenable result. It would mean that a republication of results in the Gazette automatically renews or restarts the statutory time limit under section 18(1). Taken to its logical end, this approach would imply that whenever there is an initial Gazette publication and a later Gazette publication, the later publication restarts time and potentially destabilizes legal steps already taken on the strength of the first publication. That would confer an undue and dangerous power on political actors and public institutions to affect the administration of electoral justice by manipulating Gazette publications. The law cannot be read to permit such manipulation.
Time for presenting a parliamentary election petition
The twenty-one (21) day timeline is therefore an express statutory prescription governing the invocation of the High Court’s jurisdiction in parliamentary election petitions. The statute does not provide any dispensation and/or discretion by which the Court may extend time beyond the mandatory period. The words, “shall be presented within twenty-one days”, are cast in unmistakably mandatory terms. Accordingly, the High Court must act strictly within the limits of the jurisdiction conferred by law, and it has no authority to entertain an election petition filed outside the prescribed twenty-one days. Needless to say, courts of law cannot, by adjudication, validate or excuse a breach of statute or law.. It is worth underscoring that the High Court’s jurisdiction in election petitions is not an inherent jurisdiction. It is a express jurisdiction conferred by Article 99(1)(a) of the Constitution and specifically regulated by PNDCL 284. The requirements in section 18(1) impose a mandatory pre-condition to the assumption of the jurisdiction. In other words, compliance with section 18(1) is a jurisdictional prerequisite to a proper invocation of the Court’s jurisdiction.
As this Court held in Yeboah v. Mensah (JH) [1998-99]SCGLR492, the twenty-one-day period is a jurisdictional “statute of repose”, a legislative choice designed to ensure that electoral disputes are initiated timeously or not at all. This is particularly important in a representative democracy such as ours where the mandate of elected officials are term bound. Electoral outcomes under this Constitutional architecture cannot be kept permanently open to contestation without undermining the legitimate will of the people.
Jurisdiction is the foundation of adjudication; where it is absent, the court’s most conscientious effort cannot supply it, and the most persuasive merits cannot redeem it. The statutory twenty-one (21) day period prescribed by section 18 of PNDCL 284 is therefore not an inconvenient technicality to be relaxed in hard cases. It is a deliberate legislative command, rooted in the need for certainty, stability and the timely settlement of electoral disputes. To treat it otherwise would be to replace law with discretion, and to divine a regime where jurisdiction depends not on statute, but on sympathy.
