MORE BLOWS OVER PINK SHEETS

Nana Akufo-Addo departs the court

Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com

By William Yaw Owusu

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

There was yet another stalemate over which pink sheet to use when the Presidential Election Petition was called yesterday.

Matters came to a head when James Quarshie-Idun, lead counsel for the Electoral Commission (EC) insisted in court that the list of pink sheets which the petitioners were ordered by the court to exchange with the respondents had been mixed with those already shown to Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan in the witness’ box.

He said they needed time to be able to cross check from the numerous lists since they found more pink sheets in the list of 905 unsigned pink sheets.

At this point it was clear that the respondents were not ready for Dr. Afari-Gyan to be cross-examined if the lists were not corrected.

The nine-member panel presided over by Justice William Atuguba subsequently asked the petitioners to furnish the respondents with all the lists they intend to use for the case to proceed.

Mr Quarshie-Idun: My Lord I wanted to bring a matter to the notice of your Lordships. When we ended, we expected that we were going to be given either pink sheets or a list of exhibits yesterday. It is only this morning that I was given 14 separate lists of exhibits. The first one out of 60, 30 were already included in the exhibits that was tendered. So one wonders, the time involved in checking that alone. It was only given to us a short while before we started the sitting so out of the 30, half of them was part of the 905. My Lords those that were not included we will naturally have to check to be satisfy that they were indeed not signed. If we had been given the exhibit yesterday as expected, we would have had more time to do the checking. We have eliminated in the first list of over 60, 30 are already included in the ones admitted by Dr Afari-Gyan and included in exhibit P.  We are now going to check the second list my Lord.

Justice Baffoe-Bonnie: Mr Addison, I think the order of the court was for you to deliver everything to them yesterday and they are saying that you gave to them this morning?

Mr Addison:  Yes my Lord this had to do with the pink sheet in the custody of the court and yesterday, Mr Akoto Ampaw was here, the registrar was here and he can bear testimony to that, he left here after 10:30pm. The understanding was that all parties will be present here to do this checking and they were not here so after this had been done there was a problem.

Justice Baffoe-Bonnie: Naturally you wouldn’t expected them to be here till 10:30pm?

Mr Addison: Well so my Lord they always have to understand why they could not get it yesterday and we explained to them.

Justice Jones Dotse: It means that you will not also be ready even in the afternoon? We will come and give our ruling anyway.

Mr Quarshie-Idun:  My Lord, I cannot take the risk because in this first list of 59, there are already 32 which were tendered through Dr Afari-Gyan yesterday so they need not have been included in this list. Now the remainder are the ones that we will have to check to satisfy ourselves.

Justice Jones Dotse: We are not denying you the right to check, we only want to know the exact time it will take to check your system.

Mr Quarshie-Idun: My Lord there are fourteen lists so we will need till tomorrow

Justice Dotse: Mr Addison, are those all the lists of pink sheets that you required then to verify?

Mr Addison: Those are the lists related to the no signature

Justice Adinyira: Well I want to see whether it is feasible because the non signature it will be apparent on the face of the record that you can argue so I want to suggest whether even if it is possible you bring all and you all sit down, Afari-Gyan looks at them, it is ok. So that when you come to court you say ok we looked at the 905 and then we admit that there was no presiding officers and that is it. Because that one it is not a question of interpretation.

Mr Addison:  My Lord my expectation coincides with yours, I thought that is what they will do but it looks as if they look at it with our reference to Afari-Gyan and it is only when he is in the box that he now has to go through all.

Justice Adinyira: Yes which is delay the process so me I feel that for non signature, it has appeared there so that if you would sit with all of them with all the pink sheets you have sorted, then you will look through then when you come, you tell us that, een counsel of both sides you agreed and you looked through, at least such and such, there were no signatures. Because he is now saying that it is already in the list that they gave you and yet you are coming here again. My whole point is that where they have conceded, you should sort those out and those that they are contesting and then you are putting it to them, you leave it for addresses because as for the signature it is there, its apparent. Where the polling agent the polling agents have signed even double double, it is there. You don’t need to be coming to out it to him but for signatures, i don’t think you have to come through the witness box. You have 10 people there, they have only 1 1, choose some of you and then let them through all the 1, 000 that you are claiming and then perhaps that will be it.

Mr Quarshie-Idun: I will like to indicate that there are some that they claim to indicate that there some that they claim to be unsigned according to the list that we maintain have been signed. That is the one that we are going to check.

Mr Tsikata: My Lords, respectfully, we have actually tired to be of help in this process of weeding out what does not need to be to the witness and when we looked quickly at this list of 140 which is the longest list, it is a list that is taken out of an earlier list of 266 that they made available the last time which is now reduced but in that list of 266, 224 were already in the 905 when we checked. Now I’m pretty certain that of this 140, if 224 out of 266 were in the 900, clearly a lot of them should not be here. When we are given a list a few minutes before the court arrives and we are going through it whiles trying to do other things, its very difficult

After the break, the same problem persisted.

Mr Addison: My Lord we have not received any feedback from the materials wwe gave the respondent.

Mr Quarshie-Idun: My Lord my understanding was that they were to prepare a revised  list omitting the items that were included in the exhibit tendered.

Nana Ato Dadzie

Mr Addison: My Lord he has not even given us the list so how are we going to revise it when we don’t even have that list?

Mr Quarshie-Idun: My Lords, they don’t need the list from me, they have the exhibits and the exhibits contains all the 905 admitted  by the second respondent

Justice Atuguba: Yes they have been listed out and i think what they are saying is that you take out from each of the 14 lists, those that have been admitted already as forming part of the 905 and then they can see their way clear with regards to the rest isn’t it?

Mr Tsikata: I’m really quite surprised by what learned has said. We had consultation with their side and they indicated that they were in the process of revising the list so i’m really astonished to hear him say that they are waiting for us and we have been waiting in the expectation that we will get a revised list.

Mr Akoto Ampaw: My Lords all though i’m to pay permission of the court so that i can clarify. We have indeed told them  that we are rechecking our list to see whether or not there are any repetitions in the 905 but at the same time, it will assist us if they haven’t noticed specific polling stations or pink sheets that are repetitions to draw our attention to it. That is what we have asked them to do  and for some reason, they don’t want to do it. What may happen is that we may complete our recheck and conclude that there is no duplication only for us to start this process and then they will raise the objection again.

So you see it is only proper for them iff they have noticed the duplications to give it to us.

Justice Atuguba:  Indeed EC i think this is acceptable, i don’t see any problem. In actual fact, the problem could have been  resolved either way. Once you also have the list, you couldd take, roam it through 14 and strikeout those that are repetitions. But since they have compiled it faster if they did, you also cooperate. This is reasonable.

Samuel Codjoe: I had a discussion with Mr Akoto Ampaw and he never said that.

Justice Dotse: In real terms, the 905 is in evidence. The second respondent has  also considered the 905 so the petitioners give you any list, which contains polling stations or pink sheets that in the 905, just discount it and and make a note of it. When you have the opportunity to state ur case case before the court in terms for closing addresses, you draw the attention of the court to the fact that this exhibit list has already been considered by the EC in the 905 so that  we draw the necessary linkages otherwise we will be stopping the proceedings  at every stage. It appears they are having some difficulties claiming the list so just go ahead and just use your system to clean it, then we make some progress.

Mr Quarshie-Idun: My Lords respectfully as they have exhibit P, there is no reason why there should give us any list with those that we have considered are ones that were not signed.

Justice Rose Owusu: You have the list with you so mark out the 905 that you have conceded that all

Mr Quarshie-Idun: My Lords they have the 905, why should they include any of in the list to give to us?

Gloria Akufo

Justice Sulley Gbadegbe: Just get the list put it in a computer and I will get the information within 5 seconds. What are we doing? Let’s all assist the court so that we end this matter. Both parties are not willing to cooperate with the court because this is a very simple matter. The whole world is hearing us fighting of this thing in this day and age. One of you should other better assistance to the court so that we will move forward

Mr Addison:  My Lord we are eager to finish this matter. They gave us this list of 905 only yesterday, we demanded it 3 weeks ago and at the time they brought this 905 list, we had prepared this list so for him to get and give the impression the 905 and yet we prepared the list containing the 905 is unfair.

Justice Atuguba: Anyway, let’s go by the treaty signed that they will go and clean you too cooperate as much as you can

Mr Tsikata: My Lord it is not fair to us to have us crosscheck a list 90 per cent of which is irrelevant. It is their case and i believe they must conduct the case properly. They have been preparing lists. With our previous experience, why must we always be the ones to be checking when 90 per cent of the things in the list are not rightly in the list. Frankly we have exerted ourselves.

Justice Annin-Yeboah: if an evidence is being tendered against you, it is your duty as counsel to also do some background check so if you are assisting the court by deleting those which are immaterial at least then we all proceed and get close to the end of this matter.

Mr Tsikata: My Lord we have sort to provide that help in the past but what your Lordships are asking us to do now is that we should take a list which we know already has 90 per cent of material that they themselves  have been pointed out to is irrelevant, we should take that list and we should do the work for them. Respectfully, the harm that will be done is that instead of us spending more time preparing our addresses which we are doing right now, we would have to spend a lot of time going through... So my Lords we cannot be respectfully be required to do the case.

Justice Sulley Gbadegbe: As i said, one of you should just assist the court so that we move forward otherwise we are not coming tomorrow 

Mr Addison: My Lord what i’m saying is that, i hope they will not get up tomorrow to object to the list that we bring. Then they should be bound by whatever list we bring because we are not going to bring this list tomorrow then they will get up again.

Justice Baffoe-Bonnie: Mr Addison, i don’t think you are being fair to the respondents. It is your list. They say only 905 pink sheets were not signed by the presiding officers you are saying there is no, they have provided you with the list of 905 which they concede were not signed. What you are going to give to them to cross check will be the additional figures which you are only you have that information. It should not be part of what they have already conceded.

Mr Addison: My Lords we will provide the list

Asiedu-Nketiah and Moctar Bamba

Justice Sulley Gbadegbe:  For the past two weeks, we just here, listen to arguments and then do some small work and go back home

Mr Addison:  My Lord as soon as its ready because they are working on it now, they should be done in an hour or two. They will have it this evening.

Justice Sulley Gbadegbe: Mr Tsikata we understand by 7pm.

Justice Atuguba:  Addison can you ahead of time also make the list of the 1,545 unclear stations which we feel if you list them out and put them the witness.

Mr Addison: Very well. We will do so.

Sitting continues today.