NDC’S Tsatsu Tsikata with fake documents in court?

It was all drama at the Supreme Court when Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, main witness for the petitioners, revealed that letters supposed to have been signed by 1st Petitioner in the ongoing case and presented to the court by Counsel for the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Tsatsu Tsikata, were possibly fakes.

While cross-examining Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, Counsel Tsatsu Tsikata, introduced various letters ostensibly signed by Nana Akufo-Addo, Presidential candidate for the New Patriotic Party, authorizing certain agents of the party to represent him at various polling stations.

Counsel Tsatsu Tsikata suggested that these polling stations were the same ones which were part of the petitioner's case as unknown polling stations.

However, in his answer, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia raised questions about the authenticity of the letters presented, revealing that although the letters were dated to have been written on 5th and 7th of December, 2012, the letters were stamped to have been received on 3rd December, 2012; two to four clear days before they were written.

This, Dr. Bawumia indicated could not be possible and had cast doubt on the authenticity of the letter.

Dr. Bawumia also said that the signature on the letters were not originals but electronically generated or scanned, and that it would be helpful if the originals of the letters could be provided for them to be verified as authentic.

These revelations from the 2nd Petitioner who has so far been in the witness box for eight days, silenced the lawyer for the NDC who abruptly brought his cross-examination to an end after the exposé.

Counsel Tsatsu Tsikata was on his 2nd day of cross–examining of Dr. Bawumia during which he has virtually repeated the techniques used by the lawyer of the 1st Respondent, Tony Lithur, who cross-examined Dr. Bawumia earlier in the trial.

On Tuesday, Tsatsu presented to the court various exhibits from the petitioners which, in like manner to what had been done by Lawyer Tony Lithur, were claimed to be duplicates. Dr. Bawumia, however, indicated to the court that although such duplicates could have been mislabelled or duplicated in the process of submitting the exhibits, it did not affect the analysis of the petitioners which used every polling station only once.

The day saw some notable moments including one where Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia called on the counsel for the NDC to calm down and quit shouting as shouting would not help the counsel better make his point. This was after lawyer Tsatsu-Tsikata had, on several times, raised his voice in apparent anger.