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EC’s ‘answer’ to 791,223 Voters Voting WBV 70,889 Voters Don't Have Fingers
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- Parent Category: Our Country
- Category: Elections & Governance
- Created on Tuesday, 30 April 2013 00:00
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EC’s ‘answer’ to 791,223 Voters Voting WBV 70,889 Voters Don't Have Fingers
The principal witness of the petitioners in the ongoing election petition, Mahamudu Bawumia, yesterday shot down claims by the Electoral Commission that the total number of physically challenged people who could not be verified biometrically was 70, 889, insisting that the actual number was 3, 196.
Counsel for the second respondent, Quarshie Idun, in his cross-examination of the witness had argued that the figures emanating from the petitioners could not be correct and gave the regional breakdown, suggesting to the witness that his figure of 3,196 was wrong.Mr Quarshie Idun specified that the Western, Central, Greater Accra, Volta and Eastern region had 6, 238; 3, 090; 4, 656; 3, 900 and 3, 087 respectively in terms of voters who were verified by Face Only.
The rest were given as 4, 321 for the Ashanti region; 4, 117 for the Brong Ahafo region; 18,018 for the Northern region; the Upper East region, 18, 319; with 4, 254 for the Upper West.
However, Dr Bawumia averred that the figure of 3,196 was obtained from the copy of the voters register given to the NPP by the EC, stressing that except the EC was dealing with a separate voters register, the one provided the party had the figure of 3,196.
Mr Quashie Idun yesterday continued to face difficulties in his defence of the declaration of John Mahama as winner of the December 2012 presidential election and had to fall on the support of counsels for the 1st and 3rd respondents, Tony Lithur and the National Democratic Congress respectively.
In the last day of his cross-examination of the petitioners’ main witness, counsel for the EC began by attempting to tender in documents in support of his client’s denial that votes were not padded for John Mahama in some selected polling stations.
This attempt to tender in pink and blue sheets (collation forms), however, hit the rocks when lead counsel for the petitioners, Philip Addison, raised an objection and pointed out that the Electoral Commission was tendering in a parliamentary collation sheet with respect to the Atebubu-Amantin constituency in respect of the presidential result.
Counsel Addison also pointed out that the document which the EC claimed was an original document had part of the writing on it in blue ink and other parts in carbon ink, casting doubts about its authenticity.
He also noted that some of the documents were in respect to polling stations which were no longer being challenged by the petitioners.
The objection to the documents saw the EC struggling to defend itself and soliciting help from counsel from the 1st respondent, Tony Lithur, who spent several minutes trying to justify why the EC should be allowed to tender in those documents as they were the official custodians of the documents.
The arguments from the various counsels brought in a number of Judges, including Justice Gbadegbe, Justice Adinyirah, Justice Dotse and Justice Ennin-Yeboah who queried the EC variously on why it was tendering documents on polling stations which were no longer in contention and why it was tendering documents through a witness of the petitioners and not the witness of his client.
The Court eventually ruled that the EC’s counsel could not tender in the documents through the witness and could wait to tender them in through the witness of his client.
Unable to tender in the documents, Counsel Quarshie – Idun proceeded to suggest to Dr Bawumia that there was no polling station where the total votes in the ballot box were more than the voters’ register. This, the witnessed disagreed, stating that there were many instances where that occurred.
Source: thestatesmanonline.com
