Star witness for the second Respondent in the ongoing Presidential Election Petition has returned to the dock to answer questions on the disputed 2012 elections.
The cross examination of Dr Kwadwo Afari Gyan was halted to allow KPMG conduct an audit of pink sheet exhibits filed by the Petitioners and served on the Respondents.
Even though the controversy on the pink sheet exhibits is yet to be completely resolved, the judges are in no mood to allow any further delays.
Afari Gyan has returned; Addison is probing; Quarshie-Idun is on the sidelines listening and waiting to object. The panel of judges sit on the dais watching and are directing affairs.
Proceedings begin
The Judges have taken their seats on the dais; the counsel have also taken their seats and are introducing their team of lawyers to the court.
Quarshie-Idun rose and froze. William Atuguba asks him to speak. He says that out of the batch of pink sheets given them by the Petitioners there were problems with some of them. Some had no exhibit numbers. Others were duplications.
Afari Gyan walks into the dock and is reminded of his oath.
Addison hands Afari Gyan a document and asks him to list the 905 unsigned polling station pink sheets which the EC admits were not signed.
Afari Gyan says he can do that but that will take some time.
Judge Adinyira suggests the court moves on to other matters so during lunch break the witness can sort it and tell the court which of the polling stations in the document are part of the 905 pink sheets that had not been signed.
Addison hands him another set of pink sheet from the Q series which relate to duplicate serial numbers and no signatures. Addison asks him to go through and confirm if they have no signature by the Presiding officer.
Afari Gyan thoroughly goes through the pile of pink sheets. He says none of them has been signed.
Philip Addison says the total number of pink sheet before the witness is 179 and none of them has been signed. He suggests that the list of unsigned pink sheet is not included in the list of 905 pink sheets that the EC admitted had not been signed.
Afari Gyan says he would have to check before making an admission.
Philip Addison produces another set of pink sheets. He says the Petitioners would like to tender the list to Afari Gyan. He asks witness to take a look at the pink sheet.
Objection
Quarshie Idun says the new list numbering seven do not tally with the content of the KPMG report and they have duly alerted a member of the Petitioners’ counsel Akoto Ampaw.
Tony Lithur says asking questions on these set of pink sheet could be highly prejudicial.
Tsatsu Tsikata is up. He says they have no idea when these pink sheets were generated. He says they have evidence that additional pink sheets were introduced, an evidence which have not been challenged. He says they cannot have a situation where newly generated pink sheets will be added.
One of the judges says it is the polling station that matters and not the exhibit numbers. So that, if the polling station can clearly be identified but has exhibit numbers mixed up it may well be accepted.
Tsikata respectfully disagrees. He says it does not lie with anybody, not even the judges, to reconstruct the case of the Petitioners. He says the Petitioners have categorized their allegations into 24 but it appears a new category has been introduced. He says the pink sheets now labeled as MBG which the Petitioners are threatening to cross examine the witness on, is found in the KPMG report as MBF and that is unacceptable. We cannot as we speak have the Petitioners seek to relabel their exhibits.
One of the judges again intervenes and says she remembers Dr Mahamudu Bawumia saying they had problems with the labeling so they had to relabel some of the categories.
Tsikata says the Petitioners have stated categorically that they are dealing with 24 exclusive categories of irregularities. If for any reason they have challenges, they are still opened to make ammendments but they cannot introduce new categories which is alien to them.
Lithur is up again. He supports vehemently the views expressed by Tsikata. He says they have concluded their cross examination and have begun writing their addresses and those addresses are based on 24 exclusive categories of irregularities. Therefore any change in labeling and categories will affect their case.
Quarshie-Idun is up again. He seeks to cite the difficulty in cross examining the witness on pink sheets differently labelled and which have not been captured.
Addison responds. He says there is no generation of new pink sheets. Each of the pink sheets submitted for cross examination came with the corresponding labeling in the KPMG report.
One of the judges asks if the corresponding labeling of the pink sheet exhibit is the same on the KPMG.
Addison says no.
The judge says that is the problem. He says the issue now is, it is not enough to say a pink sheet is in the KPMG report. That pink sheet must be clearly and well categorised.
Addison concedes there is a need for re-categorization but says his understanding of the order given yesterday was that the Petitioners must show that whatever pink sheet they introduce in cross examination must have been captured by the KPMG report and that is why they did.
William Atuguba says he remembers Dr Bawumia saying some of the exhibits have been recategorised but unfortunately that new categories were not tendered before the court and that is a problem.
Addison says there is the need for re-categorization, something they will do in their addresses. But he adds that the seven pink sheet exhibits in contention are still captured in the category of of no signatures except that they overlap with some other separate category of irregularity.
One of the judges has difficulty accepting the Petitioners position. He says it is not for nothing that the Petitioners themselves categorised the different irregularities.
Atuguba announces lunch break and says they will rule on the objection after the lunch break.
Court resumes
Philip Addison asks if witness has now been able to mark the 905 unsigned pink sheet exhibits. Afari Gyan says he has.
Addison asks him to extract the pages from which he has marked. Afari Gyan says he will provide the list of the extracted polling stations.
Philip Addison presents another list of 183 pink sheets in the MBQ series and asks witness to confirm that none of them have been signed by the Presiding Officer.
One of the judges says it is imperative that the witness brings the list of the 905 pink sheet exhibits so that they can tell whether the new 183 pink sheets are not part of those in the 905.
Philip Addison says if that were to happen, then it means the Petitioners would have to wait till he supplies the information. Its three weeks now and he ought to have provided the information to the court, he jabs.
Quarshie-Idun comes to the aid of the witness and says it was a voluminous document they had to deal with and they are almost through.
In the meantime though, Afari Gyan keeps perusing the list of 183 pink sheets to see if they were not signed.
Afari Gyan says he saw a name and a signature on just one of them. The exhibit number of that single pink sheet is NBQ000697, the name of the Presiding Officer is Ampem Bismark, he says.
Philip Addison asks witness to confirm that 182 of the pink sheets were not signed. Afari Gyan confirms. Addison tenders the exhibits. Respondents raise no objection.
Philip Addison shows another set of 55 pink sheets in the MBJ series. He asks witness to confirm if there are no presiding signatures on all the pink sheets.
Afari Gyan peruses the exhibits and says none of them was signed by the presiding officer.
Addison then tenders the document through the witness.
Addison presents another set of 115 pink sheets from the MBS series. He asks witness to confirm if all of the pink sheets have no presiding signatures on them.
Afari Gyan after perusing them says none of them has been signed by the Presiding officer. Addison tenders the document.
Quarshie-Idun raises an objection on one of the documents. He says it has been cancelled. Addison finds it strange that the second Respondent is protesting over one pink sheet. He says these pink sheets were given to the Respondents and they did not raise any objection. He finds it rather strange that Quarshie-Idun will now turn around to be raising objections.
After a brief banter, 114 of the documents are tendered. The Petitioners have served notice they will return to the single document that the Respondents claim has been cancelled.
Addison presents another set of 12 pink sheets from the MBQ series. He asks witness to confirm if all of the pink sheets have no presiding signatures on them.
Afari Gyan confirms that the number is 12 and none of them has been signed. Philip Addison tenders the documents. No objections from the Respondents.
One of the judges says he needs to get an understanding as to the line of cross examination. He asks if the lists of unsigned pink sheet are to confirm that there were 905 unsigned pink sheets.
Addison explains that the lists they are tendering are to show the court that the number of unsigned pink sheets are more than 905.
Credit: Myjoyonline
