A hopeful candidate for the 2024 presidential election, Kofi Koranteng, claims the Electoral Commission (EC) did not report him to the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) after disqualifying him from the 2020 elections over allegations of forgery and other issues.

Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express on Monday, he stated that the allegations levelled against him by the EC were only used to kick him out of the system during the elections.

“The system is not credible. It's the same system that got me disqualified when I hadn't done anything. It pushed me to the bottom and said, hey, listen, you forged signatures. I didn't forge any signatures,” he insisted.

“They said ‘you were a criminal’, yet they gave me back my GHS100,000. If I'm a criminal, why give me back my money? If I'm a criminal, why don't you file a claim at the CID, that Kofi Koranteng is a criminal for forging documents?” he quizzed.

Mr Koranteg said that at the time he reported himself to the CID following the EC’s assurances, however, he was informed by the police no such case had been filed.

“I went there, and they laughed at me and said, ‘Hey, this is the game they play.’ So just to validate that, I did a criminal clearance report that didn't have anything on it,” he added.

The presidential aspirant believes that the electoral system is not credible and has left many complaining.

“We are campaigning, and the people that we are pitching to are people who are disgruntled, who don't wanna know about the system anymore because they don't believe in the system.

"This system that we're working with is not totally democratic. It's littered with problems. So this is the kind of gimmick with our whole system that we need to correct.”

The disqualification

Mr Koranteng was among five presidential aspirants who were disqualified by the EC.

Their cases bordered on allegations of forgery of signatures and manufacturing of endorsees which the EC assured will be forwarded to the Police Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for further probe.

Following his disqualification, Mr Koranteng filed a suit to challenge the EC's decision, alleging that his administrative rights under Article 23 of the 1992 Constitution have been violated.

According to him, the Electoral Commission gave him a window of opportunity to re-submit the defective portions of his nomination forms; which he took and re-submitted on October 14, 2020.

He, therefore, expected that the Commission would have given him fair and reasonable treatment as mandated by Article 23 of the 1992 Constitution.

Meanwhile, the Commission's legal team denied the claim in court. The EC, while responding to the allegation said Mr Koranteng admitting that he resubmitted his form on October 14 puts him out of time.

Subsequently, Kofi Koranteng's case was dismissed.

The case which was heard at the Human Rights Division 1 of the Accra High Court was dismissed on grounds that the aspirant failed to meet the set deadline for submission of documents to the EC.

However, the disqualified candidate who is obviously not happy about the ruling blamed the outcome on the ruling NPP and opposition NDC.

At the time, Mr Koranteng had said he had been sabotaged by both parties who fear he will amass a majority of the votes cast in the upcoming elections.