Re: Bawumia Is The Whiz-Kid Of Our Time

By Nana Akua Tweneboah-Koduah

Sometimes you wonder how some lawyers roaming the country were able to study, graduate and called to the bar. There are other occasions you throw your arms into the air wondering if some lawyers in Ghana are indeed credible lawyers who could be counted on by clients when they get into all kinds of situations.

You should not blame me for making such a statement if we have someone like Yaw Buaben Asamoah, a Spokesperson for the NPP legal team and a deputy Communications Director of the party abrasively roaming the streets of Ghana and calling himself a lawyer, when certain pronouncements by him seriously calls into question who may have taught him at law school and what he learnt from that august institute.

Yaw Buaben Asamoah who sits in court and only waits and runs with pitch speeches or statements made by Dr Mahamadu Bawumia, the NPP star witness in the on-going Supreme Court challenge to the 2012 Presidential Election results, perhaps does not know what is evidence and mere speculation.

I can be forgiven if I make terrible mistakes concerning my knowledge about the law because I’m not a learned friend, but somebody like Buaben Asamoah will not escape if he makes crazy statements because he claims to be a lawyer.

Yaw Buaben Asamoah is noted for making irrational statements to the extent that the other day he stated that Bawumia has proven to be the “proper whiz-kid of our time”. Why Buaben gave Bawumia that accolade you can only imagine if only you would not draw conclusions that he made that statement to resuscitate Bawumia’s credibility that has tanked following his evasive and outright lies during his cross-examination by the respondents.

Bawumia may be good at what he does for a living, but certainly you cannot give him thumps up for his performance under cross-examination. You can only make such sweeping statements if you are ignorant about the law like Buaben Asamoah or if you are just playing pure politics.

Even staunch NPP supporters are saying privately that Bawumia did not help their case at all because he claimed ignorance of the electoral laws and attempted to make his own electoral laws. Bawumia, unlike Mr Johnson Asiedu Nketia, General Secretary of the NDC, was in the witness box and gave himself up as someone who does not know anything about what the Electoral Commission (EC) does and sought to impose what he knows as the yardstick of what the EC should be doing.

Apart from being evasive with his answers, Bawumia even kept changing his charge sheet right inside the witness box under the guise of reclassification. Thank God, that attitude was not tolerated by the justices hearing the case when they eventually tossed that reclassification document they had wanted to tender when it was found by the respondents that the exhibit numbers were missing.

Therefore for Buaben Asamoah to call Bawumia who does not know court proceedings and attempted to tender his own subjective views which he has labelled as analysis, as the whiz kid of our time, is simply balderdash.

Unless you are playing politics or you have never been to court or you were called to the bar just for the sake of it, no good lawyer or even somebody enrolled in law school will believe that someone’s personal views about an event or incident can be admitted as evidence.

Yet we have Buaben Asamoah cheering Bawumia on when he knows in his heart of heart that Bawumia’s case has totally fallen apart with the tossing of his reclassification document, CD-ROM and personal analysis into the dustbin by the justices of the Supreme Court.

Bawumia, who sits in court and lies whilst putting up a false smile cannot fool anybody apart from the NPP supporters. But Yaw Buaben Asamoah gave him an easy pass by saying that, "I now understand why Bawumia is a stubborn witness. He is a real pain in the neck of the counsel for the respondents; their demeanour tells it all”.

To Buaben Asamoah, Dr Bawumia is a real pain in the neck of the counsel of the respondents, but the day is coming when the so-called pain in the neck of the NDC will be swapped. Buaben Asamoah has seen nothing yet, but his loss at the end of the case will be insurmountable that if he decides to practice law thereafter, clients will even run away from him.

Bawumia is no whiz kid of our time. He has only put his foot at the wrong muddy area and how to wiggle himself out is what the NPP is struggling to handle.

nakuakoduah@yahoo.com