The legal counsel for the petitioner, John Mahama, has delayed in filing its closing statement for the court today, February 18, 2021 as part of the orders of the court in the last sitting.
Giving the reason for the delay, counsel for the petitioner explained that the delay was due to the fact that the lead counsel of the petitioner, lawyer Tsatsu Tsikata filed a review and a stay of proceedings application on February 16, after Tuesday’s sitting.
According to the legal team of the petitioner, they felt dissatisfied with the ruling not to allow the petitioner [John Mahama] to re-open its case and subsequently subpoena the EC Chairperson Jean Mensa to mount the witness box.
According to the Petitioner, they were of the opinion that the reasons the court ruled against their application for interrogatories was to the effect that the EC chairperson will be available for cross examination.
Hence this suggests, the second time the petitioner’s team have defied the Supreme Court directive.
Prior to this also, the legal team of the NDC led by Tsatsu Tsikata requested for the time for the hearing to be moved to 11:30am in a letter signed by the head of the petitioner’s counsel, Tony Lithur, addressed to the Chief Justice Anin Yeboah before today’s proceedings.
According to Mr. Lithur, his team was requesting an opportunity to respond to arguments raised by respondents’ counsels to his review application.
“I received a call from the Registrar of the court close to midnight, notifying me of respondents’ filed affidavits opposing the petitioner’s application for review, soft copies of which he had sent to my email at 11:13pm. I forwarded the processes to Lead Counsel for Petitioner at 11:30pm.
“In order to allow Lead Counsel for petitioner reasonable time to factor the said affidavit into his arguments in support of the application for review, I would respectfully request that this morning’s proceedings be commenced at 11:30am instead of the scheduled 9:30am.”
Tony Lithur
The apex court which had fixed today’s proceedings for 9:30am agreed to the letter presented by the petitioner, John Mahama and moved it to 11:30am today.
During the last sitting, the Supreme Court ordered lawyers in the Election 2020 Petition trial to file their closing addresses simultaneously by Wednesday 17 February 2021. The Court indicated that after hearing respective lawyers closing addresses, they would fix a date for judgement.
The Supreme Court during the last sitting in a unanimous decision, ruled out the petitioner’s legal team’s attempt to let the EC boss Jean Mensa to testify in the witness box. Reading out the court’s ruling, Chief Justice Anin Yeboah said the application to re-open the case was unknown in the country especially with regards to the current petition.
Mahama had gone to court challenging the validity of the Electoral Commission’s declaration that President Nana Addo Dankwa Addo is the winner of 2020 presidential election. The petitioner also accused the Electoral Commission, the first respondent, of vote padding but the Commission has denied that assertion.
