Addison’s cross-examination very disappointing – Amaliba

A member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) legal team, Abraham Amaliba says he is unimpressed with Philip Addison’s line of cross-examination of the Electoral Commission Chairman (EC), Dr. Kwadwo Afari Gyan.

According to him, counsel for the petitioners in the ongoing hearing of the Presidential Election Petition failed to discredit the evidence of the EC boss.

He was speaking on Accra based radio station Citi FM Friday.

Philip Addison, counsel for the petitioners after two days of cross-examining Dr. Afari Gyan managed to get him to admit to double registration in the foreign voters register used for the 2012 elections.

This was after the petitioner’s counsel showed him [EC boss] a list of duplicated names of Ghanaian abroad.

Dr. Afari-Gyan insisted that the double registration occurred, was an error on the part of the EC officials who did the registration.

Addison has been hailed by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) for a good job done.

But an unimpressed Abraham Amaliba described Addison’s style of cross-examination as "very disappointing".

He said Philip Addison instead of asking pertinent questions on the substantive issues to pin Afari-Gyan down, but was rather concentrating on "irrelevant issues".

"I thought that having the Electoral Commissioner in the witness box is an opportunity for the petitioners' [lawyer] to discredit and contradict his [Afari-Gyan's] evidence, but we saw lawyer Addison asking irrelevant questions".

He said questions such as "do you know how the biometric verification machine works? Do you know that there is a button on the machine? Are irrelevant to the case in court."

The NDC lawyer was of the view that the petitioners' lawyer has lost the opportunity to mount a strong defense for his clients.

Abraham Amaliba believes the abysmal performance of Addison in court has rather strengthened the EC’s case in court.