General News of Wednesday, 3 April 2013
Source: Yahaya Masawudu/Univers News
Spokesperson for the John Mahama legal team, Nana Ato Dadzie has said they will assemble witnesses in each of the polling stations captured by the petitioners in the case challenging the legitimacy of president Mahama. The Supreme Court on Tuesday, 2nd April asked the petitioners in the case to file an affidavit of witnesses they intend to call.
The three petitioners, Nana Akufo-Addo, Dr. Bawumia and Jake Obetsebi Lamptey alleged that irregularities occurred in 11,916 polling stations. However, the number of polling stations has been scaled down to 8579 polling stations following an amendment of earlier petition.
Speaking on Radio Univers’ current affairs program Behind The Headlines, lawyer for the defendants, Nana Ato Dadzie said: “If they call only 28 witnesses and the 28 witnesses are to give their evidences in circumstances as to cover all the areas, we will call that figure, but we are minded to ensure that for each polling station, we will get a band ready to defend it, to prove that nothing untoward happened. So for the 8579 polling stations we will assemble 8579 ready to give evidence to prove that the vote was clear, clean and fair”, he said.
The Supreme Court has narrowed the essence of the petition to two issues based on which they would give their ruling after parties in the case have advanced their arguments.
The court would first establish whether or not there were statutory violations, irregularities, omissions and malpractices in the 2012 general elections. The court is also to ascertain whether or not the said violations, omissions, irregularities and malpractices affected the outcome of the results of the elections.
The court has set April 6 for the next sitting