Election Petition: Evidence showed Jean Mensa was not in the ‘strong room’ for 2-days – Tsatsu Tsikata

Tsatsu Tsikata has argued that some of the evidence the witnesses for the petitioner gave in court suggested that the Chairperson for the 1st Respondent was not at the Electoral Commission headquarters for two days after the elections were held on December 7.

Tsatsu Tsikata made this observation from the cross-examination of Rojo Mettle-Nunoo by the Counsel for the Electoral Commission.

“The Counsel for the Electoral Commission actually questioned Mr Mettle-Nunoo and said you were waiting for three hours in the Secretariat for the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission which means that she had not been there for three hours before the time when she was supposed to come and declare the election,” Tsikata explained to KSM on the KSM Show last Friday, March 12.

“Where was she in those three hours?” Tsatsu Tsikata rhetorically asked.

Tsikata observed that Jean Mensa, the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, later came back to the ‘strong room’ of the Commission, had a meeting with Rojo Mettle-Nunoo in which he raises some important matter only for the Chairperson to send him [Rojo Mettle-Nunoo] and Dr Michael Kpessa-Whyte to go and talk to the Petitioner.

“By the time they got to the Candidate, she is already on air making a Declaration. So, when did she do the work that she was supposed to do as a basis for making a Declaration? It didn’t happen,” Tsatsu Tsikata observed.

He explained further, “because all the evidence that was before the court showed that she was barely in the strong room over those two days after the election; the 8th and the 9th [December].”

Tsikata insisted that the legal requirement is that she should do the Collation at the National Collation Centre.

“That is regulation 44(10) of the Constitutional Instrument (CI) which she herself signed (CI 127).”

He said the revelation by the Counsel for the 1st Respondent who said that the witness for the Petitioner waited for three hours for the Chairperson, “undermines the case of the Electoral Commission even more significantly and yet none of that was taken into account.

“What I am insisting is that these are matters of law and of the constitution because ultimately, we cannot have in this country a President who is there without having received 50% plus of the valid votes cast in an election. That’s just a no no according to the constitution,” Tsatsu Tsikata insisted.