You can speak all the English you want, but do you have the numbers? – Gabby to Tsatsu

Member of the NPP, Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, has pointed out to Tsatsu Tsikata, lawyer for John Dramani Mahama, that it will not take the speaking of plenty English words to win their case in court without evidential figures to support their case.

He said that among the things that the John Dramani Mahama Election Petition is seeking, is their challenge of about less than 5000 votes that is considered missing from their numbers, when the difference between the two leading candidates in the 2020 elections is some more than 500,000 votes.

Calling it a simple case of numbers, he stated that the petitioner should focus more on the numbers than appearing to be so knowledgeable in the speaking of English language, or, his authority on various laws or precedents to argue his case.

"I can take you back to 2013 when similar discoveries were made and even when you read that decision, the court said they had all the documents, including the collation sheets. Bear in mind that even at that time, they were not entitled to the collation sheets.

"Now, when you look at all that's being said and done about justice and the rest of it, the key point is that, in order to have justice, in the sense that you come to court and you say that these are the reliefs I am looking for; and what are the reliefs they are looking for? They are looking to say that in the declaration of December 9, Akufo-Addo did not go beyond the 50% required. And then the question is, if he did not go beyond the 50% required, what did he get? What numbers are you presenting to the court to say that the court should call the results as declared as invalid?

"And that's really the key point. It gives you an indication that right from the beginning, the respondents - and that's what Tsatsu Tsikata should have taken his cue from, that right from the word go, after you've presented your case, the respondents knew that you had not made your case.

"Here, we are talking of a margin of over 500,000 votes. You are saying that the declaration was wrong, and when we look at the numbers; and it's all about the numbers, you can speak all the English you want, you can quote all the laws you want, you can focus on all the precedents you want, the bottom line is this, Do you have enough numbers to challenge the declaration made on December 9? We look at the evidences presented to the court and they have less than 5000 votes," he said.

Gabby Otchere-Darko was speaking on Joynews' Newsfile and monitored by GhanaWeb.