Only 355 Pink Sheets Challenged By Lithur - Out of 11,138 filed by petitioners

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Parent Category: Our Country

Category: Elections & Governance

Created on Thursday, 25 April 2013 00:00

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Only 355 Pink Sheets Challenged By Lithur - Out of 11,138 filed by petitioners

At the end of his five-day cross-examination in which he failed to ‘tame’ Mahamudu Bawumia, principal witness for the petitioners in the ongoing election petition hearing at the Supreme Court, Tony Lithur, lead counsel for John Dramani Mahama, managed to raise questions about only 355 of the 11,138 pink sheets which form the basis of the petitioners’ case.

His main claim in respect of about 255 of the pink sheets was that they had been duplicated by the petitioners just to shore up the numbers to make their case, a claim that was vehemently denied by Dr Bawumia.

For about 100 of the pink sheets, which did not have the signatures of the presiding officers, Mr Lithur’s challenge was on the basis that they have details such as the names of the presiding officers and the time the elections started and ended.

The principal witness for the petitioners, himself the second petitioner, had consistently told the court that 704 of the pink sheets originally filed at the court had been deleted from their list and that they did not form part of their analysis.

Mahama is beneficiary of illegalities

Dr Bawumia yesterday firmly stood his grounds in his defence of the claim by the petitioners that there were constitutional and statutory violations, malpractices and irregularities in the conduct of the elections.

Responding to questions from Mr Lithur, he said while Mr Mahama could not be accused of any illegality, he was the beneficiary of the constitutional and statutory violations, malpractices and irregularities that occurred in the election.

Dr Bawumia added that the petitioners were also not in court to accuse any voter of engaging in illegalities, stressing: “We are here because the Electoral Commission did not conduct the elections according to laid down regulations and constitutional provisions.”

Duplicate polling station serial numbers

Dr Bawumia told the court the duplication of same polling station serial numbers was one of the serious malpractices identified in the conduct of the election, and thus compromised the integrity of the election.

He explained that there was a high degree of correlation between the duplication of polling station serial numbers and the constitutional and statutory violations, irregularities and malpractices that occurred in the conduct of the elections.

According to the petitioners, 74 per cent of all cases of over-voting took place at polling stations with duplicate serial numbers; 75 per cent of cases of voting without biometric verification took place at polling stations with duplicate serial numbers; 77 per cent of pink sheets without the signatures of presiding officers occurred at polling stations with duplicate serial numbers; while 85 per cent of duplicates pink sheets have duplicate serial numbers.

Bawumia demands annulment of 2,600 votes affected by duplicate serial numbers

Dr Bawumia insisted the integrity of the elections had been compromised at the polling stations with duplicate serial numbers, and so the affected 2,600 votes should be annulled by the court.

Responding to a question from Tony Lithur that he was seeking an annulment of the those votes just because he wanted to become a Vice President, Dr Bawumia said: “We are seeking the annulment of the votes because we can’t trust the integrity of the results from those polling stations because of the violations, malpractices and irregularities.”

EC has a duty to protect integrity of polls

When Mr Mahama’s counsel suggested to Dr Bawumia that agents of the petitioners had a duty to check the malpractices that took place, the witnessed told the court it was the responsibility the second respondent, the Electoral Commission, to protect the integrity of the polls by preventing the irregularities, violations and malpractices from taking place.

By Nana Yaw Dwamena

Source: The New Statesman/Ghana