The controversy over the total number of pink sheet exhibits brought before the court in the ongoing Presidential Election Petition may well be resolved, Thursday when an official of KPMG mounts the dock.
Proceedings begin.
The judges have taken their seat and so too have the lawyers.
An official of KPMG, Nii Amanor Dodoo is asked to mount the dock.
Philip Addison is up. He asks Amanor Dodoo if he can confirm the 171 errors made inadvertently by KPMG in their auditing and which KPMG’s attention was drawn to by the Petitioners.
Amanor Dodoo says 34 of those errors were captured and rectified. He clarifies that those were not necessarily errors.
Addison: Did you take inventory of all the pink sheets in the custody of the Registry prior to the counting.
Dodoo: No we did not.
Addison: Were you informed as to who filed the pink sheets.
Dodoo: Yes we were told the Petitioners filed.
Addison: Did it come to your attention that the Respondents had filed any pink sheet?
Dodoo: Not that i recall.
Addison: You were asked to do a faithful count of the pinks right. Yes, Dodoo answers.
Addisson: How many were the pink sheets in the custody of the Registry.
Dodoo: 13,926
Addison: There were a number of pink sheets with respect to the Registry there were remarks you made. What were those remarks.
Dodoo explains that information on those pink sheets were not legible.
Addison: Are you aware that a polling station can be uniquely identified by a polling station code.
Dodoo: I guess so. It was not the mandate of the KPMG to identify the polling station by its code.
The total number of pink sheets with these remarks were 1045 is that right?
Dodoo: Yes That is right.
Addison: The Petitioners gave a list of 850 pink sheets from the 1045 pink sheets on which those remarks were made and explained that those pink sheets could be identified by the polling station station code is that right.
Dodoo: Yes but our mandate was not to identify those pink sheets by the code. We were asked to make a faithful count. We could not have done anything other than that. Another court order can be given and those concerns could be addressed.
Philip Addison is unimpressed with the answer. He chides KPMG for failing to include the comments by the Petitioners in their final report. He says if KPMG did not need the comments from the parties they ought not to have asked for them in the first place.
Atuguba and one of the judges come to the rescue of KPMG. Atuguba says the issue being raised by the referee bothers on jurisdiction and once the concerns being raised by the Petitioners were beyond their jurisdiction they could not have included it in their report.
Addison suggests to Dodoo that out of the 1045 remarked by KPMG, the Petitioners have found 1,086 with unique polling station. Dodoo says he has no answer to that question. Once again the judges come to the rescue of Dodoo. They say the witness must be questioned on his level of knowledge on the matter. They suggest to Counsel to address the bench on some of the issue he is raising since they are better placed to answer those questions.
Addison: How many unique pink sheets were counted in the Registrar’s set.
Dodoo says a straight answer cannot be given to this question because the count was based on three issues; exhibit numbers, polling station codes and polling station names.
Each situation generated different numbers because some of the exhibit numbers were repeated.
Addison: Were you given the list of the 26,000 polling stations in your counting. No, Dodoo responds.
Addison: What is the total number of pink sheet counted from the President’s set.
Dodoo: 9,856, but four instances where the exhibit numbers were on another sheet so the total was 9860.
Addison: The 9,860 does not include a set of series which was not counted.
Dodoo admits.
Addison: So the figure given is an incomplete figure.
Dodoo: That is so and we have stated it in the report.
Addison: Can you tell the court the total unique pink sheets from the President’s custody.
Dodoo: We were limited to checking the President’s set in comparison to that of the Registrar’s. So I cannot tell the total unique pink sheets.
Addison: There were 2,876 pink sheet in the President’s set but not in the Registrar’s set is that correct?
Dodoo: Yes that is correct.
Addison: Did you identify any pink sheet in the Registrar’s set that were not part of the President’s set?
Dodoo: Yes, and the number is 6,629
Addison: Are you aware that pink sheets were also served on all the Respondents.
Dodoo: I presume so.
Addison: In our comment, we mentioned 4,089 pink sheet used by counsel for the first and Third Respondent is that so.
Dodoo: Yes
Addison: There were 1097 pink sheets out of the 4089 that were used by counsel for the First and Third Respondents but which were not part of the Registrar’s set.
Dodoo: We had no basis to confirm or deny that.
Addison: There were 2,230 out of the 4089 pink sheets used by the First and Third Respondents but which are not part of the President’s set.
Dodoo says he cannot confirm or deny that. Once again the judges come to the rescue of KPMG. These are questions the referee cannot answer because they did not count the exhibit copies with the Respondents.
Addison says they are forced to ask these question in open court because the referee failed to incorporate their comments in the final report presented by the referee to the court.
Addison: Are you aware that 648 pink sheets used by the Petitioners in cross examining the Second Respondent were not part of the neither the President’s set nor the Registrar’s.
Objection
Tony Lithur is up with an objection. He says the figures being bandied about by counsel are untrue and extremely prejudicial.
Tsatsu Tsikata supports the views by Lithur. He says the questions are unfair to the witness. The figures being mentioned are incorrect and cannot be accepted. He objects to the witness being asked “extraneous” questions
Philip Addison says he is surprised at the comments by the colleagues on the other side. He says they have presented to the Respondents the same comments they sent to the referee and there was no qualms only for them to start raising objections. He finds it rather intriguing that counsel for the Respondents- First and Third- will tell the court that the 4,089 pink sheets used in cross examining the witness are extraneous materials and should not be mentioned. He says these 4,089 pink sheets were duly filed by the Petitioners and so for anybody to suggest that those pink sheets are not to be spoken about in court beats his imagination.
Tony Lithur is back again. He says their objection is to do with relevance and he is convinced the figures being mentioned and the questions being asked consistently of the witness are irrelevant to the witness highly prejudicial.
“With the greatest of respects we are not banding figures about,” Addison suggests forcefully. He adds that the genesis of the matter is that the Respondents disputed the fact that 11,842 pink sheets were filed by the Petitioners and that necessitated the count by KPMG. So that if the referee is done with the count but the count did not include documents used by the Respondents, 4089 documents, it is germane for the Petitioners to draw the attention of the referee and indeed the court that those pink sheets were filed but have not been accounted for by the referee. He says since the Respondents have failed to tell the court the total number of Pink sheets served on them, it may well be the case that there are more pink sheets in their possession which are yet to be accounted for.
Lithur is up. Is he suggesting that we were served 80,000 pink sheets, he remarks sarcastically.
Atuguba intervenes. He says the Judges will rule on the objection raised by the Respondents.
Ruling
By 8-1 the objection is over ruled.
Philip Addison continues with his questioning. You will agree with me that the President’s set you counted contained two sets of different series. He mentions the different series.
Court goes on Lunch break
Court resumes.
President William Atuguba summons one Stephen Atubiga and Kweku Boahen to court on July 2. The two made comments on Asempa FM, Boss FM and Angel FM on June 25 which was later published in the Statesman newspaper. The two together with Editor of the Searchlight newspaper Ken Kuranchie are to appear before the court on July 2.
Atubiga is reported to have stated on Asempa FM that even if the ruling party were to lose the ongoing court case, they will never hand over power. They will meet the NPP boot for boot.
Addison continues with his questioning of the KPMG official.
Addison: Did you count all the pink sheets in the Registrar’s custody.
Dodoo: No. But he clarifies. The exhibits were filed in a number of lots. and they counted only one lot.
Addison suggests that the count involved more than one set of pink sheets. He goes further to say ask Dodoo to explain the process that informed the decision by the referee to leave out some of the pink sheet in the count.
Dodoo says the Referee matched the information by the labels as presented by the Registrar and so the pink sheets that were counted were deemed to be extra copies.
Addison: Can you tell the identity of the pink sheets that were not counted in the Registrar’s office
They were meant to be extra copies. No I can’t, he admits.
Don’t you think if you had examined those pink sheets you would have found some of the pink sheets you claimed were not located in the President’s set of pink sheet?
Dodoo explains they did not count those pink sheets because they were deemed to be extra copies.
Analysis by the Petitioners indicate that the unique count of the Registrar and the President’s set is 10885.
If you add 655 pink sheets used by the Respondents in their cross examination but were not found in the Registrar and the President’s sets the number will go up 11,533 will go up.
If the Respondents discloses all the pink sheets they have in their possession there is a likelihood the number of pink sheets filed could be increase?
Dodoo admits it may.
Tendering of document
Petitioners now tender the comments they made on the report through the KPMG official.
One of the judges asks what purpose there is in tendering the document through the witness.
Addison says he is the only witness they can tender it through. Without the information being tendered, the Lordships will not have the benefit of all these information, he suggests.
Lithur raises an objection to the tendering of the comments.
Ruling
By 6-3 majority, the judges say the document cannot be tendered.
Philip Addison continues by asking the witness if he recalls telling the court that the company as a risk management policy do not give out soft copies to their clients
Dodoo says they do not “ordinarily” give out the soft copies and he emphasises the word ordinarily.
Addison probes further to find out from him on which instances are soft copies given out.
Dodoo reads a manual of the company which spells out the conditions under which soft copies are given. One of those conditions is that a contract signed must include the provision of soft copies.
Addison suggests to witness that KPMG has no such policy with regards to the clients and that there are KPMG copies on the internet.
Atuguba wonders the relevance of the question being asked. He says issues about soft copy was raised and ruled upon and so he wonders why the same question is being asked.
Another judge intervenes. He says he understood the Petitioners’ request for soft copy was to facilitate their perusal of the final report of the KPMG but even without the soft copy they have done a good work in perusing the report and have come out with valid comments. He wonders why the petitioners will now go back to the issue of soft copies.
Addison says they went through great pains in arriving at the conclusions they arrived at, when the referees could have made it easier for them if they had supplied the soft copy.
He says the questions are to “dent the credibility” of KPMG especially when they are aware that KPMG has given soft copies to many of its clients.
One of the judges says that is “below the belt”. Addison admits and withdraws those comments.
He concludes his cross examination of the witness.
Tony Lithur is up. He requests for two minutes to round up his cross examination. He starts his question. Without concluding, the president informs him that the two minutes he requested is up and should round up.
With laughter Lithur says he has withdrawn the two minutes.
President of the panel draws his attention to the fact that hearing would have to come to an end. He sits down.
Court adjourns to July 2, 2013.
Credit: Myjoyonline
