The drama at the court with respect to the hearing of the presidential election petition at the Supreme Court is getting interesting by the day. Though I had read the witness statement of Dr. Kpessah-Whyte before he appeared in court today, I expected a little bit of finesse and honesty from him considering that he is a lecturer of public policy at the University of Ghana, unlike Asiedu Nketia who claims to be a palm wine tapper.
It is still shocking why a respected lecturer like Kpessah-Whyte could agree to lead such frivolous evidence as a witness for John Mahama. Dr Kpessah-White and Rojo Mettle-Nunoo were appointed by John Mahama to represent him at the strong room of the Electoral Commission during the collation of the 7th December Presidential election. According to Dr Kpessah-White, the EC tricked him and Mr Rojo Mettle–Nunoo to go and consult with John Mahama and the results were declared in their absence. What a story!!!
It is a public knowledge the reason the EC expects each candidate to have 2 agents is to ensure that at every point in time at least one of the agents is present during voting or collation in case one of them has to attend to nature’s call or any other important assignment as instructed by the candidate. The EC has no right to send an agent on errands for whatever reason.
The following questions and answers in court provided some interesting tit-bits for news and social media trolls.
*Question*: Are you aware the EC Chairperson has no right to instruct or send you?
*Answer*: Yes, My Lords.
*Question*: Do you know you are not obliged to take instructions from the Chairperson of the EC?
*Answer*: Yes, My Lords
*Question*: Did the EC Chairperson instruct you personally?
*Answer*: No My Lords. She spoke to Rojo Mettle-Nunoo and he in turn, communicated to me.
*Question*: why do you claim the EC Chairperson instructed the two of you and you obliged?
*Answer*: We obliged because of the seriousness of the issue.
*Question*: Why did the two of you leave, instead of making sure one of you remains to monitor the proceedings?
*Answer*: My Lords, we trusted the EC to do the right thing in our absence.
Following from these questions and answers I still have lots of questions still begging for answers. The EC instructed you to leave the strong room to consult with John Mahama and the most reasonable thing to do was for the two of you (a PhD, and former Deputy Minister of Health) to leave the collation centre? If this is what being a PhD does to people, then God have mercy.
The NDC claims they have never trusted the impartiality of the EC. How was it possible for Rojo and Kpessah-Whyte to trust the EC to an extent of the two of them leaving the strong room? Boi.
*From the foregoing, it simply means that the EC Chair could have instructed these two old men to go and buy Auntie Muni Waakye or Gobɛ for her, and they could have obliged.* She could have asked them to go and clean her home and they would not have hesitated.
Again, since the whole witness was about the EC Chairperson instructing Rojo Mettle-Nunoo, why didn’t Rojo himself mount the witness box? ɛno na mente aseɛ no!!!
Lawyer Tsatsu Tsikata has filed an application to request some information from the EC and both the lawyers of the EC and the 2nd Respondent have expressed their intention to oppose the application. Let’s see what happens in Court tomorrow.
James Mckeown
Helsinki, Finland
#SupremeCourtDiaries
