Petitioners to submit lists of unique pink sheets

The Supreme Court sitting on the ongoing presidential election petition on Tuesday directed the petitioners in the case to submit the list of unique pink sheets it has identified out of the 1,545 sheets KPMG, for one reason or the other, had classified as illegible.

The Court gave this directive in a ruling on an application filed by the petitioners praying the Court to recall KPMG, which was originally tasked to count the pink sheets filed by the petitioners, to conclude some aspects of the work it.

It would be recalled that the petitioners in their comments to the draft KPMG report and subsequently in their cross-examination of Nii Amanor Dodoo, representative of KPMG, pointed to various inconsistencies and issues with the KPMG report.

Among these issues was a list of 1,545 pink sheets in the Registrar’s set, KPMG had set aside and classified as illegible and on which the various tests run to establish uniqueness had not been done. Among the reasons KPMG excluded these 1,545 were unclear or blank polling station codes, unclear polling station names, blank ballot accounting sections etc. But the petitioners indicated that these issues could not be their doing as they were primarily faults of officials of the Electoral Commission who produced the pink sheets.

The petitioners noted that out of the list of 1,545, they had identified a total of 850 using polling stations codes which had been captured by the KPMG report itself. They also indicated that 655 of the remaining had also been identified using other variables such as polling station names, exhibit numbers etc.

The petitioners also indicated that KPMG had failed to identify the unique pink sheets in the set of 2,876 pink sheets the report confirms were in the set of the president of the panel but, not in the registrar’s set. They further mentioned that they had been able to identify 871 unique pink sheets from the 2,876 which needed to be added to the unique sheets in the registry’s set.

It was on this basis that the petitioners filed an application dated 5th July praying the court to request KPMG to do the following: to determine the polling station names and codes of the 1,545 pink sheets and determine the unique count in the set and to determine the unique count of the 2,876 pink sheets that the referee's report establishes as part of the set of the president of the panel, but which are not contained in the set of the Court Registrar.

The petitioners finally prayed the Court to direct KPMG to determine and produce the full list of the unique count of the sum of the 8,675 unique pink sheets already identified in the registry’s set, the unique pink sheets in the 1,545 pink sheets described in the report as illegible, and the unique pink sheets in the 2,876 pink sheets of the set of the president of the panel which are not contained in the Registrar's set.

However, the Court in its ruling delivered by the President of the Panel, Justice William Atuguba stated that the KPMG report was auxiliary and that there was enough material with which the petitioners could make their analysis with the aid of the referee’s report and that any lingering difficulties could be cleared in cross-examination of the Chairman of the Electoral Commission.

The court, therefore, proceeded in dismissing the application as in its view it was not necessary to recall KPMG.

The petitioners have stated that they have identified 1,291 unique pink sheets out of the total sheets they have identified in the set of 1,545. The petitioners have also given an indication that the 8,675 unique pink sheets already identified in the registry’s copy were added to the 871 unique pink sheets they have identified in the set of 2,876 pink sheets in the President’s set but, not in the registry’s set and the 1,291 unique pink sheets in the list of 1,545 classified by KPMG as illegible, it would establish a unique count of 10,837 unique pink sheets.

Again, the petitioners maintain that when this is added to the 648 pink sheets used in the cross examination of the Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia by the respondents which are all in evidence but which are neither in the set of the registry nor the president of the court, it would bring the total unique pink sheet count from the available evidence to 11,485.