Nana Ato Dadzie, counsel for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has suggested that the principal witness, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia and the Petitioner’s legal team were “not sure of what they are fighting for”.
He accused the New Patriotic Party’s legal team of varying the number of reported irregularities in day three of the substantive hearing in which three NPP leaders are challenging the verdict of the 2012 General elections.
“They again tried to reduce their own figures. They had started with 4,709 irregularities. They come to 11,960 earlier this week, Counsel indicated they have dropped to 11,832 and later on 11,138. They are not too sure of what they are fighting over”, Ato Dadzie mocked, during the post-court interviews.
Earlier in court, Tony Lithur, lead counsel for the first respondent accused the 2012 vice-presidential candidate for the New Patriotic Party of “amending their case without amending their pleadings”.
He was joined by NDC’s Tsatsu Tsikata who emphasized that ‘this petition has been filed and amended and amended. And if on the basis of new information the petitioner wishes to amend further the rules allow them to do that. But we cannot accept some documentation being sneaked in effectively at this stage”, he charged.
But not to be outdone, counsel for petitioner, Philip Addison debunked the objections.
He explained that “we are not amending our pleading; all we are seeking to do is to abandon part of the evidence. This process reduces the burden on the respondents”.
But the court after taking a break to consider the objections returned and ruled that the objection was over-ruled.
The Court will sit again on Monday 21st April 2013.