There was prolonged laughter Thursday across the floor of the Supreme Court hearing the election petition when Mr. Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, witness for first and third respondents jokingly asked if he could be handed a calculator from the key witness for the petitioners.
Asiedu Nketiah, also known as General Mosquito, who is General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress, had submitted an answer of 100 as the tally of ballots on a pink sheet when asked to analyse a claim of over-voting until some murmuring on the floor tipped him off that something was amiss.
He quickly submitted that the answer should rather be 1,000, and added that perhaps he could use Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia’s calculator.
Bawumia is the second petitioner and key witness and just endured some 20 days of giving evidence and cross-examination during which he used the calculator.
Mosquito’s remark quickly sent the packed courtroom, including judges laughing, a situation made more lightheartedly by his lead counsel, Tsatsu Tsikata, who put in humorously that he had thought that being a “village palm wine tapper” he did not know how to use a calculator.
Asiedu Nketiah’s evidence Thursday centred mainly on how the petitioners had no basis going to court because the December 2012 elections were free and fair, a situation he said was affirmed by both international and local observers, including the petitioners themselves.
He said his position was evident in the fact throughout the country, there was no single complaint by agents of the petitioners way of accepted procedure, and that their protestations started long after the polls had been declared.
Source: Daily Graphic
