Afari-Gyan is being “cheeky” in the witness box - Addison fumes

Two wrongs they say don’t make a right, and it has never been right to wrong someone, even if they have wronged you first. This was the spirit that drove lead counsel for the petitioners’ in court on day 45.

Lawyer Philip Addison having sensed that Dr. Afari-Gyan had served him with a “cheeky” answer, quickly prompted him to give up such responses to avert being paid in the same coin; which was likely to come in a question to him.

Dr. Afari-Gyan, who was giving evidence as a witness-in-chief for the Electoral Commission, was asked by Lawyer Addison to tell the court what the total valid vote cast in Techiman North was. He politely answered that it is 30,616 and waited for the next question to flow. From the petitioner’s point of view, the figure Dr. Afari-Gyan gave exceeded the total tally of pink sheets by over 1,700 votes.

As an alternative of providing a simple yes or no to the question posed to him, Dr. Afari-Gyan opted to use statements such as “my lords, I don’t know where he is getting that from” to answer Philip Addison.

Mr. Addison gave him a second chance to appropriately answer the question, but this was also to no avail. An unabashed Dr. Afari-Gyan repeated the same statements: “my lords, I don’t know where he is getting that from”.

This pushed counsel for the petitioners to tell the court that: “I thought that was quite cheeky. And if by giving those cheeky answers, the cheeky questions come, nobody should complain”.