FRESH party’s legal triumph and 2015

INEC’s position on the Federal High July 29 judgment is that the ruling is specific to the FRESH party, which means that the other deregistered parties were not granted any reliefs, as they were never a party to the suit. This interpretation has created sharp divisions within the legal community, with divergent views being canvassed […]

INEC’s position on the Federal High July 29 judgment is that the ruling is specific to the FRESH party, which means that the other deregistered parties were not granted any reliefs, as they were never a party to the suit. This interpretation has created sharp divisions within the legal community, with divergent views being canvassed on both sides of the coin.
The recent special convention of the ruling PDP ended in chaos with ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar leading seven governors to form a parallel “New PDP”. Compounding the crisis is the earlier formation of the Peoples Democratic Movement, PDM by associates of the former Vice President. INEC, meanwhile, continues to register new parties while also deregistering others that fell afoul of its stipulated provisions, chief among which is the winning of at least a seat in the legislative chamber of either the State or National Assembly.
When it comes to party-post sharing and nominations for major political offices some convulsion are expected in the newly registered All Progressives Congress (APC), an amalgam of political strange bed fellows – Gen. Muhammadu Buhari’s Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) the All Nige-ria People’s Party (ANPP) and ex-Governor Ahmed Tinubu led ACN.
Regional parties like APGA and Labour, which managed to clinch one or two governorships in previous elections may have nomination brushes of their own which, like the bigger parties, may lead to decamping or cross-carpeting. The last quarter of this year may witness explosive congresses and jostling for nominations into choice political offices while the first quarter of 2014 would pitch the parties against each other as we inch closer to the 2015 general elections. Already events on the political scene today is a measure of the pulse of 2015 and we can see the disturbing palpitations that, by all calculations, portends crisis as the ambitious opposition parties seek to wrest power from the equally ambitious incumbents.
No power configuration is without crisis. How the leading political office holders going to manage the inevitable intra and inter-party conflict will reveal the level of their political maturity.
The implication of the court verdict on FRESH is that INEC’s confidence in exercising lordship over the existence of political parties is shaken. This is the first time it has lost such a fundamental verdict on an issue that could determine the legitimacy of the Electoral Law 2012 (as amended) upon which it based its power to deregister “non-performing parties”.  
Part of the gaping holes in the Electoral Act 2012 is that promoters of the dere-gistered parties could apply for registration of new parties under a new name and INEC is saying that if such political associations meet the requirements, they’d be registered. But deregistration awaits them again if they fail to meet stipulated regulations that are required to keep them alive as functional entities. So, in essence, this game of musical chairs of registration and dere-gistration would continue infi-nitum, if the Electoral Act 2012 remains in its current form.
What legal sense does this make? Why register and deregister parties? The more plausible action would have been to suspend the parties from contesting elections until they put their house in order, much the same way as errant publicly quoted companies are sometimes suspended by the Stock Exchange from participating in its market activities when they run afoul of its regulations. There are other precedents. The National Universities Commission (NUC) which regulates the activities of universities sometimes withholds recognition or approval of certain faculties if they fall short of its academic standard.
There have been cases where the affected universities went to court and won such cases against the NUC. The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN regularly penalizes erring banks and their officials if they offend any of its provisions, and once they make amends, they return to business. The National Communications Commission, NCC has on several occasions sanctioned telecommunications operators for poor service delivery. Fines sometimes are imposed on the errant outfits before sanctions are lifted, once they conform to standards.
INEC chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega ought to look at these precedents and advise the federal lawmakers to amend the Electoral Law 2012 to achieve the positive objective of sanitizing the political parties registrations in such a way that they are compelled to attain achievable operational  standards, instead of imposing harsh, difficult provisions they are less likely to achieve.
A system that produces about 60 political parties is faulty indeed. The FRESH verdict is a wake-up call for the National Assembly and the federal government to revisit the Electoral Act 2012 and take a holistic look at how the penchant for party ownerships by political actors could be discouraged. If there’s a level playing field under a political atmosphere that is just and fair to all contending politicians, cross-carpeting or decamping, let alone the floating of new parties by disgruntled politicians who are unjustly denied access to party platforms, would not have arisen.
INEC as the election umpire should begin to examine critically this revolving game of registration and deregistration. Such exercise is a precious waste of time and resources. If the main objective of the Electoral Act is to discourage the mush-rooming of political parties, it should look critically into the issue of internal democracy in the existing parties and set up strong regulations that eliminates the powers of party tin gods or godfathers, who often try to play politics of selection to favour godsons above the legitimate election of less favoured, but popular candidates.
By all means, INEC should discourage fractionalisation of parties, and the undemocratic practices of automatic nomination, or unopposed nominations of candidates. The Commission should withhold recognition of candidates who fail to emerge through well organized internal democratic process of open election and nominations.
New parties, once registered should never be deregistered. As the court ruling noted,  when parties are deemed to have violated any regulation of the Electoral Law, they could be queried and given a fair hearing before being sanctioned. As this writer has tried to show, suspension rather deregistration, which the learned judge even noted is not in our constitution, should never be applied to punish any registered political party because the drafters of the 1999 constitution never envisaged a situation where a party once registered could be deregistered.
That is probably why that word is not in our statute books.
Bolaji wrote from Ibadan