Petitioners Accused of Dumping Fraud Charges

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Philip Addison and Akoto Ampaw
Philip Addison and Akoto Ampaw

? As Atuguba?s Pink Sheets Are Just 9,857

Even though executives of the New Patriotic Party prior to going to the Supreme Court exhorted their supporters to go jollying in preparedness of an Akufo-Addo?s presidency because the party had gathered enough ?watertight and incontrovertible evidence? to prove that the 2012 election was fraught with widespread rigging, the party is yet to prove one single case of election thievery in the ongoing court case.

According to Alhaji Bature Iddrisu, Managing Editor of The Al-Hajj newspaper, after 32 days? of a legal tussle between the petitioners and the three respondents in court, counsel for the petitioners have so far not? been able to provide the so-called ?incontrovertible evidence? of fraud against the respodents.

Speaking on Ekosi Sen on Asempa fm on Tuesday, Alhaji Bature said the supposed incontrovertible evidence of the petitioners to prove electoral malpractices, such as padding and deduction of votes, by the three respondents have turned out to be a fa?ade.

?Whiles the petitioners have not only disappointed their supporters who were in high spirit due to the assurance by their party leaders that the 2012 election was botched to favor President Mahama, they have rather ended exposing the underbelly of the NPP and what they are made,? he stated.

According to him, prior to the petitioners going to court, leading figures of the party including the first and second petitioners organized press conferences to announce that the Electoral Commission together with the National Democratic Congress and President John Mahama ganged up to massage results of the last election to rub Nana Akufo-Addo of victory.

An allegation he said, the counsel for the petitioners are finding difficult? to prove in court because ?what they are trying to do is akin to squeezing water from a stone or rolling the Tema motorway like a mat?

Alhaji Bature added that what added more oxygen to the petitioner?s claim of widespread malpractices was when supporters of the NPP were goaded on, and emboldened to brace themselves for an Akufo-Addo presidency in the sense that the party had gathered enough evidence that will compel the Justices of the Supreme Court to overturn the verdict.

?Interestingly, counsel for the petitioners have had a tough time in proving their allegations that forms the basis on which they went to court, instead what they have managed to prove is some irregularities and omissions, a situation that cannot be discounted in any election even in developed democracies,? he added.

It would be recalled that the nine member panel of the Supreme Court? sitting on the election petition set out two broad issues for trial.

They include whether or not there were statutory violations, omissions, irregularities and malpractices in the conduct of the December 7 and 8 elections and also whether or not the alleged violations, omissions, irregularities and malpractices affected the outcome of the results of the elections.

Some lawyers and election watchers have argued that from the day the hearing of the substantive case started, the petitioners have managed to only prove that the election may be fraught with some irregularities and omissions, but they have not been able to prove the widespread malpractices that they alleged.

In most of the cases where counsel for the petitioners have been able to prove, the last election was fraught with irregularities and omissions, they have been unable to establish those irregularities, and or omissions, were deliberate, and done to favor any one candidates.

Owing from what has transpired in court so far, supporters of the party are said to have given up on the court case.

Meanwhile, Margeret Jackson, one of the nation?s prolific writers report that, contrary to claims by the petitioners that they filed and served the respondents with 11842 pinksheets, an audit of the presiding judge?s control mechanism by KPMG indicates that the petitioners filed only 9857 pinksheets.

Read Margeret Jackson?s write-up below

The KPMG, the accounting firm contracted by the Supreme Court to count the pink sheets submitted by the NPP with their affidavits to contest the results of the 2012 Presidential Election have finished counting the control pink sheets lodged at the offices of the presiding judge, Justice William Atuguba.

But unimpeachable information reaching me indicates that the pink sheets fell short of the NPP claimed magic number of 11,842. The total,rather came up to just 9,857 with a difference of 1,985.

This information is a huge victory for the respondents who have claimed all along that the pink sheets supplied by the NPP did not add up to 11,842.

It was this relentless protestations from the respondents which led the nine justices sitting on the case to agree to conduct an audit of the pink sheets to determine the truth or otherwise of the claim by both parties.

The KPMG, a reputed accounting firm was thus selected by the Supreme Court to conduct the audit. But on the day that KPMG, which is doing the exercise for free, decided to start counting the pink sheets, they were hit with a snag when the respondents claimed that they were each given 24 boxes of exhibits, but did not understand why the boxes of exhibits at the offices of the Registrar was 32. This led to a brief suspension of the counting with both parties heading to the Supreme Court for new directions.

It was at the SC that the justices asked the KPMG to resume the counting but asked the accounting firm to take into account the complaints of the respondents in their final report.

But the strange happenings at the offices of the Registrar was not over yet, as another box of pink sheets found its way to his office when the KPMG officials together with observers of the all the ligating parties went for the resumed counting.

When the counting was over, yet another strange thing happened when to the amazement of all, the pink sheets counted totalled 13,928 instead of the NPP?s number of 11,842. This huge variance of over 2,000 pink sheets set tongues wagging with the respondents crying foul that some foreign material may have been smuggled into the offices of the Registrar.

This back and forth issue led the justices finally to agree that the pink sheets at the offices of Justice Atuguba which they initially agreed to use as the control sheets should be counted to set the records straights.

But the NPP will have nothing of this as they protested vehemently. This protest led to nowhere with the justices standing their grounds that the pink sheets at Justice Atuguba?s office have to be counted at all cost.

Therefore, with the counting of the control pink sheets over and the number falling short of the NPP?s magic number of 11,842, the respondents have been vindicated.

Secondly, the assertion by the respondents that foreign material may have been smuggled into the offices of the Registrar may hold water after all, because if it was the same number of pink sheets supplied to all the parties including all the nine justices of the SC, there is no way the numbers will keep changing.

The NPP have a lot of explanation to do in court. If indeed they supplied less than 11,842 pink sheets to the respondents, it puts the whole cross-examinations that have been done so far into serious question. What it means is that the respondents did the cross-examinations with less information than the petitioners have made the court to believe.

The current situation does not look too good for the petitioners and I would not want to stick my neck out by saying that this case is heading towards a total dismissal on technical grounds.

Source:?A A Yayra (The Al-Hajj)

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