Madam Gloria Akufo, a member of the NPP legal team challenging the 2012 presidential election results, says the petitioners will prosecute their case with only 45 witnesses.
The Lead Counsel for the petitioners – Nana Akufo-Addo, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia and Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey – on Thursday told the court that they have come across more evidence of malpractices and irregularities at 11,916 polling stations. The petitioners had initially made a case for only 4,709 polling stations.
But Nana Ato Dadzie, who speaks for the NDC’s legal team accused the NPP of fishing for non-existing evidence to appease its followers in the ongoing case, is claiming that the petitioners would now need to produce over 11,000 witnesses to verify their evidence.
He told Evans Mensah, host of Joy FM’s Top Story that the respondents would also be compelled to call over 11,000 witnesses to counter NPP’s evidence.
He was also worried the large number of witnesses would unnecessarily drag the case.
“They are amending [the petition] also to correct, obvious, arithmetical errors in the face of their own preview,” he pointed out, adding, “we can’t have a situation where every other day we are shifting the goalposts and that is our concern and what it means for speed, delays and all that.”
But Ms Gloria Akufo corrected the impression that the petitioners would automatically call about 11,000 witnesses.
“To put it in perspective,” she stressed, “the rules require that you indicate the number of witnesses that you plan calling in prosecuting such a petition. We in our petition indicated that we will call about 45 witnesses.”
Meanwhile, NPP Deputy Communications Director Yaw Buabeng Asamoah said the new evidence goes to strengthen their case, insisting their case is not only solid but that the 2012 election results declared by the EC cannot be said to be fair.
“This has not changed the party’s petition but has rather strengthened the basis of our petition,” he remarked.
He explained: “As we have gone through over 90% of pink sheets that we have in our possession, nearly 11,000 of those pink sheets exposed difficulties with the numbers, so you are talking about over 46%.
“Even at the time when we filed this petition with 1.3 million over votes in doubt, we could have unseated H.E John Mahama …this only goes to strengthen the point that we are making that this election was massively flawed, that this election was not conducted according to law, that the irregularities in this election if dealt with effectively and judicially will result in His Excellency John Mahama being asked to vacate the presidency and Nana Akufo-Addo being asked to ascend to the presidency – that is what the numbers say.”
Source: Myjoyonline
