Outside court: Counsel for petitioners, respondents cite each other for peddling falsehood

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Tsatsu Tsikata entered day 9 of his cross-examination of Dr Bawumia (L) on Tuesday Ahead of the Supreme Court's ruling on an objection raised against an accusation that petitioners in the election fraud case acted in bad faith, lawyers for both sides have accused each other of peddling falsehood. A member of the NDC legal team, Abraham Amaliba reiterated on Joy News that the bad faith was premised on the fact that the petitioners focused their claims of irregularities in the stronghold of the first respondent, to portray as though the infractions only occurred there. He said what the lead counsel for the third respondent, Tsatsu Tsikata sought to do in court was to point out similar infractions in the stronghold of the first petitioner, which he claimed were overlooked by the petitioners. “First and foremost, you need to understand that these petitioners headed to court with these allegations they called irregularities, these allegations we described as administrative errors,” he remarked. He insisted that the assertion of bad faith was pleaded in the affidavit of the third respondent. But this attracted a sharp rebuttal from a member of the petitioners’ legal team, Madam Gloria Akuffo, who described the claim as a “lie”. She explained: “The truth of the matter is that Mr Tsikata was seeking to lay a foundation for making a case of having brought the case in bad faith. The rule requires that when you make such an allegation, you don’t leave it to a general traverse: that is just making the allegations without giving any further details.” She said the counsel should have provided particulars to prove that there was bad faith in the case brought by the petitioners, but that was not done in their affidavit sworn to by Mr Asiedu Nketia, representing the first and third respondents. She therefore accused the respondents of going through the “backdoor” to get their case heard, and promised that the petitioners will “strike out as having been put there irregularly”. But Mr Amaliba countered her claim, and accused her of laying claim to an “untrue” statement, adding that Madam Akuffo was relying on High Court’s civil procedure rules, when the case is being heard at the Supreme Court. He cited the ruling bothering on bad faith on a pink sheet from Asokwa, saying the court had only wanted to ensure that “their ruling today would be in tandem with their earlier ruling”. Nevertheless, Madam Akuffo thinks Mr Amaliba has “misstated the ruling of the court”. She said: “The court in applying the rules had ruled that, as far as it is practicable, it will apply the Supreme Court rules of procedure. But where there are no specific provisions in the Supreme Court rules, it shall apply the High Court civil procedure rules.” NDC lawyer Tsatsu Tsikata today accused principal witness of the petitioners Dr Mahamudu Bawumia and his co-petitioners of deliberately ignoring pink sheets in the NPP’s stronghold which have the same alleged infractions. But lead counsel for the petitioners, Phillip Addison objected strongly to the accusation. Mr Addison insisted that Mr Tsikata had no evidence to back that accusation. After few minutes of back and forth, president of the judges hearing the case, Justice Atuguba deferred ruling on the objection raised on bad faith. He said the panel have ruled on a similar objection and will want to be consistent, and therefore want to locate that ruling. Proceedings was adjourned to Wednesday, 930 am for the ruling.