Supreme Court still within 42-day ultimatum – Maurice Ampaw

Private legal practitioner Maurice Ampaw has expressed optimism about the Supreme Court's ability to pass judgement on the Election Petition case, within the 42-day period it gave for the 2020 election petition hearing.

According to him, the processes exhausted so far gives him confidence that the petition will not go beyond the stipulated period.

He explained that the case management stage is the most crucial of the steps and that once it is done, it will just be a matter of the court hearing the cases from all the parties and cross-examining witnesses.

He urged Ghanaians to have patience with the judges and pray that none of them experiences any sickness within the period since that could cause a delay.

“The days given are targets. We could either meet or not and resolution can be reached at any point to extend the date. They are within time because this is the most difficult stage. The pre-trial and case management are the processes that we use to manage the case.

You look at the timelines given and I’m convinced that we will still be within 42-days. They are within the 42 days so people should just have patience”, he said Neat FM.

Maurice Ampaw also accused the lawyers for John Dramani Mahama of attempting to delay the process.

He noted that the lawyers, having realised that they have a bad case, have resorted to delaying tactics to frustrate the system.

He berated legal luminary, Tsatsu Tsikata for using ‘old law’ to hold back the process.

"As lawyers, one of the tricks is that if you don’t have a good case, you delay it. We emplore a lot of tactics to delay the case either to frustrate the system or make it seem like you are working and that’s exactly what Tsatsu is doing.

"He is getting praise on social media that he has schooled the judges, he has done nothing. If you know the law, you’ll know that he schooled no one. He was in the realm of the old. He was displaying old skills. We are in the new era and he should get used to it. Tsatsu cannot school the judges. These Supreme Court judges are masters. The law is in their bosom so you can’t school them,” he said.

John Mahama is contesting the result of the 2020 Presidential elections declared by Jean Mensa.

Mahama wants a re-run of the elections with the argument that no candidate attained the 50%+1 vote spelt out in the constitution.