NDC REJECTS PINK SHEETS

Tsatsu Tsikata reportedly stormed the counting room

Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com

By William Yaw Owusu

Tuesday, May 20, 2013.

The counting of Pink Sheets in the on-going election petition has taken a strange twist as lawyers for the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and President John Dramani Mahama are pushing for it to be stopped.

A member of the NDC legal team Abraham Amaliba claims the party thinks the process has been “compromised” saying the counting as ordered by the Supreme Court must be stopped.

The call comes closely in the heels of widely criticized misgivings expressed by the party’s General Secretary, Johnson Asiedu Nketia long before the inventory taking and counting process commenced.

Right after the court sitting on Monday, DAILY GUIDE sources said that counsel for ruling NDC Tsatsu Tsikata allegedly tried to gate-crash the venue where KPMG, an international accounting firm, was doing the counting but was denied access, because he had not been accredited to be there.

Matters came to a head when Mr. Tsikata allegedly demanded to monitor the exercise but he was reminded that the NDC already had representatives in the room as the court order stated.

Not having his way, Mr. Tsikata reportedly requested a meeting with President of the panel trying the case, Justice William Atuguba, to impress on him to vary the court’s orders in respect of the counting to allow them intermittent access.

It is not clear whether the respondents counsel were able to meet Justice Atuguba but DAILY GUIDE learnt that the issue is expected to come up strongly when the court sits today.

The NDC and President John Dramani Mahama’s legal team were seen pacing up and down the vicinity of the venue for counting.

Interestingly, it was the NDC that requested for the count of the number of pink sheets attached as exhibits by the petitioners and their purported action would come as a surprise to critics.

According to Mr. Amaliba in an interview with Accra-based Asempa FM the NDC suspects the pink sheet exhibits in the custody of the court Registrar has been tampered with even though inventory for the exhibits were jointly taken by all representatives in the petition, including representatives from the Judicial Service.

This has led to the suspension of the counting at the instigation of the NDC.

The NDC claimed their representatives at the venue have indicated the appearance of new boxes of pink sheets.

Mr Amaliba told Citi Fm that after complaints by his team: "the Judicial Secretary then ordered for the suspension of the auditing pending tomorrow, [where] we will then make a formal complain to the bench and then they will give us the guidelines on how to go about it."

He added: "At the last adjourned date that was on Thursday, we took an inventory of the number of boxes containing the pink sheets that are to be audited by KPMG. Now today it turned out that our observers came out from the counting room to inform us that there were additional boxes that have been introduced with the existing boxes."

But Gloria Akuffo, a spokesperson for the petitioners in the landmark case has debunked the grounds of the NDC’s protest.

“This morning, when they [KPMG] were to start the actual work, representatives of all the parties including the court officials and KPMG officials went to where these boxes were being kept and they were taken to the conference room where the counting was to take place”, she said.

 In an interview with Citi Fm, she stated that all along, all the parties have agreed on the process as it progressed, but on Monday morning when actual counting was to commence, the inventory showed that two boxes of the pink sheets were “missing”; “…together -with all representatives of the parties, they joined the officials [of the Judicial Service], they went to where the boxes were being kept where they retrieved one of the missing boxes…as work progressed, they were able to retrieve the other box.”

“Work continued smoothly without complaints from any party,” she said the representative of the petitioners in the “Strong Room” where the counting was being done relayed to her.

The Gate-Crashing

According to Ms Akuffo, after counting progressed for a while, a representative of the respondents in the Strong Room left the room, whereby work had to stop until his return.

But he called from outside to say that work can go on without him.

Apparently he was convinced that he was confident in the monitoring role of his colleagues in the room; “In the course of the work, counsel for the respondents, including Mr.Tsikata, Mr. Lithur and Mr. Quashie-Idun stormed the room.”

They were consequently ordered by representatives of KPMG to leave the room because they were not accredited to be in the room.

DAILY GUIDE sources explained that they saw the lawyers for NDC, the Electoral Commission and President John Dramani Mahama’s legal team were seen pacing up and down the vicinity of the venue for counting.

Joseph Windful, a Senior Partner at KPMG confirmed the incident, saying that the internationally acclaimed auditing firm would steer clear off the raging confrontation and resume its work when the parties sort themselves out.

“We’ve got to have patience until our engagement partner meets with the party and sort out whatever issue that is of contention, and after that, we carry on with the assignment,” he told Citi Fm.

“You know, our appointment is as referees; referees do not get involved in the game, we don’t play part of the game, we referee. That’s exactly the role we are supposed to play and that’s what we are doing.

The Order

Following persistent argument over the actual number of exhibits said to have been tendered by the petitioners, the nine-member panel chaired by Justice William Atuguba, sought the help of KPMG to account for the actual number of exhibits tendered.

The accounting firm has the duty of “specifying in respect of each pink sheet, polling station name and its code number and exhibit number if any,” the court stated.

“In doing so the said referee should make a true and faithful count of the said exhibits of pink sheets according to and under the various categories of alleged electoral malpractices in issue before this court.

The court said the professional fees to be charged by KPMG should be shared equally between the parties and added that each party is at liberty to choose two representatives for the counting exercise as observers.

KPMG has since opted to do the counting free of charge.