The controversy over the total number of pink sheet exhibits brought before the court in the ongoing Presidential Election Petition may well be resolved, Thursday when an official of KPMG mounts the dock.
Myjoyonline.com will bring you live updates of the questions, the answers, the drama and just maybe another warning or ban.
Proceedings begin.
The judges have taken their seat and so too have the lawyers.
An official of KPMG, Nii Amanor Dodoo is asked to mount the dock.
Philip Addison is up. He asks Amanor Dodoo if he can confirm the 171 errors made inadvertently by KPMG in their auditing and which KPMG’s attention was drawn to by the Petitioners.
Amanor Dodoo says 34 of those errors were captured and rectified. He clarifies that those were not necessarily errors.
Addison: Did you take inventory of all the pink sheets in the custody of the Registry prior to the counting.
Dodoo: No we did not.
Addison: Were you informed as to who filed the pink sheets.
Dodoo: Yes we were told the Petitioners filed.
Addison: Did it come to your attention that the Respondents had filed any pink sheet?
Dodoo: Not that i recall.
Addison: You were asked to do a faithful count of the pinks right. Yes, Dodoo answers.
Addisson: How many were the pink sheets in the custody of the Registry.
Dodoo: 13,926
Addison: There were a number of pink sheets with respect to the Registry there were remarks you made. What were those remarks.
Dodoo explains that information on those pink sheets were not legible.
Addison: Are you aware that a polling station can be uniquely identified by a polling station code.
Dodoo: I guess so. It was not the mandate of the KPMG to identify the polling station by its code.
The total number of pink sheets with these remarks were 1045 is that right?
Dodoo: Yes That is right.
Addison: The Petitioners gave a list of 850 pink sheets from the 1045 pink sheets on which those remarks were made and explained that those pink sheets could be identified by the polling station station code is that right.
Dodoo: Yes but our mandate was not to identify those pink sheets by the code. We were asked to make a faithful count. We could not have done anything other than that. Another court order can be given and those concerns could be addressed.
Philip Addison is unimpressed with the answer. He chides KPMG for failing to include the comments by the Petitioners in their final report. He says if KPMG did not need the comments from the parties they ought not to have asked for them in the first place.
Atuguba and one of the judges come to the rescue of KPMG. Atuguba says the issue being raised by the referee bothers on jurisdiction and once the concerns being raised by the Petitioners were beyond their jurisdiction they could not have included it in their report.
Addison suggests to Dodoo that out of the 1045 remarked by KPMG, the Petitioners have found 1,086 with unique polling station. Dodoo says he has no answer to that question. Once again the judges come to the rescue of Dodoo. They say the witness must be questioned on his level of knowledge on the matter. They suggest to Counsel to address the bench on some of the issue he is raising since they are better placed to answer those questions.
Addison: How many unique pink sheets were counted in the Registrar’s set.
Dodoo says a straight answer cannot be given to this question because the count was based on three issues; exhibit numbers, polling station codes and polling station names.
Each situation generated different numbers because some of the exhibit numbers were repeated.