Election Petition: Please Spare us the Supreme Court.

In every civilized country, the three arms of government rule the country. The three arms of government are the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary. Other countries where there is a strong freedom of the press, the media is considered the shadow fourth arm of government.

When the New Patriotic Party (NPP) sent their election petition to the Supreme Court, they immediately made the world to believe that the Supreme Court is tinted. In other words, the Supreme Court would not be completely transparent. They raised an alarm on Justice William Atuguba as the President of the Supreme Court who was going to sit on their case. They quickly made a U-turn when they realized that they had made a very bad mistake, by attacking the integrity of the Supreme Court of Ghana.

Now, so far into the case, they’ve accused the nine Justices of being too strong on Lawyer Addison but very soft on both Lawyers Tsikata and Lithur. They say even Justice Baffor Bonnie shouted on Lawyer Addison to keep quiet when he (Baffoe Bonnie) was talking. They attribute that to intimidation. They are therefore encouraging Lawyer Addison to be hard and tough on the Justices, thinking that, that might help them have a draw in their case. Little minds at work.

The NPP are now saying the Justices should not have allowed the pink sheets to be counted at all by KPMG. They said the pink sheets should have been counted even before the start of the case. They are also asking the court why they let KPMG use the pink sheet set in the office of Justice Atuguba as the control mechanism and not any of the other eight Justices. In other words, KPMG should have randomly picked which set they would use as the control mechanism. Again, little minds at work.

The NPP are questioning the rationale for the court to allow Lawyer Tsikata to tender the pink sheet from Asokwa but did not allow Lawyer Addison to tender the collation sheets for some constituencies. They are saying that so far, their last hope is on the collation sheets after their 13,900 pink sheets have failed them. They have signaled that Lawyer Addison would introduce the collation sheets again and if they are not accepted, they will go on demonstration.

The NPP are also accusing the Supreme Court of asking Lawyer Addison to keep track of his line of questions and avoid repetitive questions, but the same court allowed Lawyer Tsikata to repeat his questions to Dr. Bawumia for 13 good days. They are also accusing the Justices of helping Dr. Afari Gyan in answering his questions. For example, on one pink sheet, Lawyer Addison mentioned the figure 22 to Dr. Afari Gyan which he confirmed. A Judge looked at the figure and said he saw 77. Lawyer Addison told the Judge that Dr. Afari Gyan has confirmed the figure. That was when the Judge told Lawyer Addison that “we are all here to find the truth.” In fact, the correct figure was 77, and so there was no over-voting on that pink sheet.

The NPP are accusing the Supreme Court Judges of helping Lawyer Quarshie-Idun to frustrate Lawyer Addison by upholding his objections on all the important questions that Lawyer Addison will ask Dr. Afari Gyan. They say that the important documents Lawyer Addison will try to tender as evidence are also rejected because Lawyer Quarshie-Idun claims he does not have them. Other little minds at work.

I know the list of accusations has not ended since Lawyer Addison is still cross-examining and the issue of the KPMG audit has not even come up yet. When the pink sheets are not exactly 11,842 as being told by the NPP, questions would have to be answered and the ignorant people would add to the list of accusations. Little minds would always be at work in the NPP.

Now, my question is, with all these accusations going on, would the NPP agree with the Supreme Court when the final verdict comes out and it is not in their favor? To the NPP, justice is only served when the case is in their favor and Nana Akufo-Addo is declared winner of the December 2012 elections. Anything short of that is NOT justice and they will plan series of demonstrations that would lead to the country being ungovernable. They now think elections are won by the number of demonstrations they go. Instead of the NPP planning for the 2016 or 2020 elections, they are rather planning how to make the country ungovernable. When they loose the 2016 elections, they would run to the Supreme Court and ask the Electoral Commission to tell the court which country they ordered their pink sheets from.

The NPP is accusing the Electoral Commission of statutory violations, irregularities and omissions in the December 2012 elections, because the Commission was firm in making sure that the elections was free, clean and fair. I hope they don’t accuse the Supreme Court of statutory violations, irregularities and omissions if the court was firm in making sure that the final verdict on this case was also free, clean and fair.

The NPP has already accused the other two arms of government of corruption. They’ve not found any against John Mahama’s Presidency but because the Presidency of John Kuffour was that corrupt, they think every Presidency ought to be corrupt. The only arm of government left to be accused is the Judiciary (Supreme Court) and they should spare us that one. If the NPP don’t trust and respect anybody and anything, they must know that Ghanaians do.

Lawrence Appiah-Osei

NDC USA Financial Secretary

Appiah65@Hotmail.om