Respondents in the election petition hearing at the Supreme Court seem to have banked their last hope on delaying the court process, and seeking ways to reduce the number of pink sheets the petitioners are relying on to avoid a declaration in favour of the petitioners.
This comes ostensibly after their failure to destroy the petitioners’ case of substantial irregularities which allegedly affected the outcome of the December presidential polls, as well as their subsequent failure to mount a credible defence of their own.
However, the numbers appear not to be a problem for the petitioners, as Mahamudu Bawumia, main witness of the petitioners, kept stressing while being cross-examined by the various counsel for the respondents.
But this point seems to have been totally missed by the respondents who keep emphasizing mislabelling and inadequacy of exhibits to delay proceedings at the court and imbue some hope in supporters of their course.
The Supreme Court yesterday adjourned hearing of the petition to June 24, to enable KPMG complete its audit of the pinksheets, following the controversies surrounding the number of pinksheets that were filed at the registry of the court by the petitioners and what was served on the respondents.
The New Statesman can report that the petitioners need just 1,500 pink sheets out of the many other thousands tendered to invalidate the declaration of John Mahama as winner of the elections, should the court uphold that irregularities occurred and had an effect in the 2012 elections.
Should the petitioners manage to annul results from just 1,500 polling stations, it would mean that John Mahama would not have secured the required 50%+1 of the votes needed for a first round win and, thus, a run-off would have to be held for the winner of the polls to be known.
The category of irregularity with the lowest number of polling stations being challenged is the category of the “No presiding officer signature” where the petitioners are praying the court to annul results from 1,739 polling stations.
If the court upholds the argument of the petitioners and annuls only these 1,739 polling station, that would see John Mahama tumbling down from the 50.7% declared for him by Dr Afari-Gyan to 49.52% and about 300,000 votes down from securing the required 50%+1 votes needed for a first round victory.
Again, the over voting category has 1,826 polling stations which the petitioners are praying the court to annul. Should the court uphold just these 1,826 polling stations and order an annulment, it would see John Mahama again tumbling down from the 50.7% declared for him by Dr Afari-Gyan to a meager 49.37% and about 350,000 votes down from securing the required 50%+1 votes for an outright win.
These numbers apparently show that the respondents are on a wild goose chase, as all the petitioners need is something in the region of some 1,500 pink sheets to be annulled to get John Mahama’s declaration overturned and a run-off of the elections ordered.
Again, what the respondents seem to have lost sight of is that when the petitioners filed the initial petition, they were relying on just about 4,000 pink sheets which if upheld would have still meant that Nana Akufo-Addo secured an outright first round victory of 50.3%. John Mahama’s declared vote share would have come down to 48.26% as a result of the annulments.
Indeed, the petitioners need even less than 4,000 pink sheets out of the current 11,138 they are relying on to see Nana Akufo-Addo declared winner.
Without double counting, and should the court uphold the petitioners’ argument on just two categories – “over voting” and “voting without biometric verification”, it would mean that 3,525 polling stations in all would have to be annulled.
But with these 3,525 polling stations, it would be more than enough to secure an outright declaration for Nana Akufo-Addo as the winner of the December polls. The annulment of these 3,525 polling stations would mean that John Mahama’s vote share would be slashed down from the 50.7% declared for him to 48.06%, while Nana Akufo-Addo’s vote share of the valid votes would soar from the 47.7% declared for him to 50.47%, which is more than the needed 50%+1 votes for a first round victory.
The respondents have publicly acknowledged several times that they had been provided with over 8,000 pink sheets, much more than the 1,500 the petitioners need to initiate a run-off or even the 3,500 they need to secure an outright victory for Nana Akufo-Addo.
John Mahama, the National Democratic Congress and now the Electoral commission, seem to have all lost sight of these numbers and have failed to realize that even what they acknowledge to have is much more than what the petitioners need to emerge victorious at the Court and have a verdict in their favour.
A source close to the petitioners’ legal team yesterday told the New Statesman that whatever the case, the Court would use the exhibits at its disposal, a matter to be settled by the ongoing KPMG audit.
“But what is certain is that what the respondents themselves have acknowledged would be more than enough to invalidate the declaration and indeed early indications from the audit of the registry’s copy as well as the copies of the Presiding Judge indicate that the petitioners submitted more than 11,000 unique exhibits and that any shortages, even if proven, would be as a result of service faults on the part of the registry that ultimately served all the respondents as well as the Judges,” the source added.
This strategy of cutting down numbers was outdoored during the cross-examination of the main witness of the petitioners, Dr Bawumia by Counsel for John Mahama, Tony Lithur. And it gathered much steam when Counsel for the NDC, Tsatsu Tsikata, took his turn to cross-examine the 2nd petitioners.
“It has obviously become the option of last resort in the past few days with the failure of the EC to defend its actions and conduct of the elections in December as the respondents have wasted substantial time delaying the court process and stressing on mislabelling and inadequacy for exhibits from the petitioners,” our source in the petitioners’ legal team noted.