We submitted 11,842 different polling station pink sheets – Bawumia tells Tsikata

Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, lead witness of the petitioners in the ongoing Supreme Court petition challenging the declared outcome of the December 7th, 2012 Presidential Elections, has insisted the petitioners duly submitted 11,842 different polling station pink sheets to the court, subsequent to which copies were sent to the respondents.

Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia stated this while being cross-examined for the 4th day running by counsel for the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Tsatsu Tsikata.

Counsel Tsatsu Tsikata has mainly based his four day cross – examination of the main witness on what he claimed were duplicated pink sheets which had been tendered in as exhibits. He had sought to suggest that the petitioners deliberately duplicated the exhibits to pad their numbers and deceive the court that there were over 11,000 polling stations under contention.

However, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia in a sharp rebuttal on Monday stated that Counsel was rather deceiving the court and that the petitioners had submitted 11,842 different polling station pink sheets to the court and that the petitioners by their checks with their records had confirmed this.

Dr. Bawumia said that the duplicates in the exhibits as had been shown by Counsel for 3rd Respondent, Tsatsu Tsikata and Counsel for John Mahama, Tony Lithur could only mean that there were more than 11,842 physical exhibits submitted but that the petitioners had certainly submitted 11,842 different polling station pink sheets.

The main witness for the Petitioners who was also the NPP’s 2012 Vice Presidential candidate in the December elections noted that he was very confident that any audit by the court would settle the matter and show which of the parties was right, adding that such an audit would establish that indeed the petitioners submitted 11,842 different pink sheets from 11,842 polling stations.

He stressed that the suggestion that the petitioners had deliberately duplicated exhibits to pad their numbers and deceive the court could not be sustained because if the petitioners really wanted to increase their numbers all they would have done was to submit all the 24,000 pink sheets at their disposal or to pad their numbers with some of the other pink sheets which did not have irregularities present on its face.

Dr. Bawumia again mentioned that the petitioners long before submitting the physical pink sheets had submitted further and better particulars which detailed all the 11,842 polling stations being challenged in a list with the various irregularities present on the face of the pink sheets from those polling stations and the results garnered by all the political parties in those polling stations. He pointed out that it was not possible to generate such a list if the petitioners did not have the physical pink sheets from those polling stations.

Dr. Bawumia in response to Tsatsu, who had indicated there was a need to count the exhibits, stated that the petitioners were looking forward to that audit to establish the fact that indeed 11,842 different polling station pink sheets were submitted to the court.