EC Shot Down Over Smuggled Pink Sheets - Bawumia’s Polling Station

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Parent Category: Justice & Security

Category: Law Reports

Created on Friday, 26 April 2013 00:00

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Bawumia’s Polling Station

The court in a 6-3 majority decision dismissed attempt by the EC counsel to tender in evidence pink sheet of the polling station where Dr. Bawumia cast his ballot during the election.

The rejection followed an objection raised by Mr. Addison over the tendering of the document by the EC since he said it had no relevance to the issues in evidence.

He argued that no proper foundation was made in tendering the pink sheet for Dr. Bawumia’s polling station and also said it amounted to ‘ambush litigation’.

“We attached 11,842 pink sheets, the 2nd respondent (EC) did not attach a single pink sheet as exhibit in their affidavit and yet they want to rely on something that is not known to us per the rules set for this trial.”

Mr. Addison said that the petitioners had not even complained about Dr. Bawumia’s polling station and it was not part of the polling stations being contested saying “I do not see the relevance here.”

However, Mr. Tony Lithur, counsel for President Mahama supported the EC saying he was not opposed to Mr. Quarshie-Idun’s move.

Tsatsu Tsikata, counsel for the NDC, also associated himself with the EC, saying that it was allowed for a party during cross-examination to produce documents to surprise a witness.

Mr. Quarshie-Idun also argued that Dr. Bawumia was able to identify the pink sheet out of the 26,002 as the place he cast his ballot and they wanted him to clarify the evidence he led.

Justices Atuguba, Sophia Adinyira and Vida Akoto-Bamfo had ruled that the EC should tender Dr. Bawumia’s polling station pink sheet while Justices Julius Ansah, Jones Victor Dotse, Rose C. Owusu, Annin-Yeboah, Paul Baffoe-Bonnie and Sulley N. Gbadegbe ruled that the EC could not tender the document.

Padded Votes

Dr. Bawumia told the court that padding of votes, as they alleged in the petition came in the form of over-voting, voting without biometric verification or duplicate serial numbers.

The EC counsel then pulled out a document, which he said indicated how the commission announced the results but Mr. Addison objected and said Dr. Bawumia could not testify on a document the petitioners did not generate.

Justice Atuguba then asked Mr. Quarshie-Idun to bring the primary pink sheets that were used to tabulate the figures that was being sought to be tendered.

The court said it was ‘provisionally’ accepting the document on condition that the EC would supply the court with the original copy.

Throughout the cross-examination, any error that occurred during the election had been described by Mr. Quarshie-Idun and Tony Lithur as ‘trans-positional or clerical errors’ and ‘administrative errors’ respectively but Dr. Bawumia had always parried all those suggestions.

EC Counsel: I suggest to you that out of the 26,002 you could provide only one polling station which we say is trans-positional or clerical error.

Witness: We have supplied 11,138 pink sheets of polling stations where we have detected discrepancies in the figures declared by the second respondent.

As counsel persistently put it to Dr. Bawumia that the petitioners did not raise any protest on the counting day, the witness said “we complained to the chairman of the second respondent and he told us to go to court.”

“My Lords there are many ways to kill a cat,” he added drawing spontaneous laughter in the courtroom and said that most of the votes that were under contention inured to the benefit of President Mahama.

Justice Baffoe-Bonnie even jokingly asked Dr. Bawumia to acknowledge that somebody (NDC Chairman Dr. Kwabena Adjei) owns the patent of the catch phrase.

Dr. Bawumia disagreed with the EC that the 14,158,890 voter register used in announcing the presidential results was an error and pointed out that there was a difference between the total number of votes in declaring the presidential and parliamentary votes put together.