Pink things, jackboots and Lithur's mojo
I wonder where the absurdity is going to end, Jomo: How the singular, most important document in the dispute raging on at the Supreme Court over the results of the 2012 presidential election came to be identified only by the colour of a piece of paper is probably more comprehensible than the riddle of the sphinx.
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In spite of the dense legal dialect in flight at the hearing of the dispute, the document that is the most frequently referred to is vaguely described only as a “pink sheet.” What the hell does that mean?
Purple sheet, crimson sheet, chocolate sheet: What is in a colour when it comes to indentifying official documents? Sheet?! For Heaven’s sake, every document is printed on a sheet, anaa..?
Why not something that sounds more official, technical and pompous, to impress election superintendents and watchers across the globe? Ghana Election Polling Tally Form A1, which may be shortened to Form A1, for example? Anyhow, it is pointless at this stage to spend time bemoaning the weird linguistic idiosyncrasies of those who wrote the Election 2012 documents, don’t you think?
Popular views regarding the progress of hearing of the NPP’s election petition at the Supreme Court are sharply divided: One is that the mode of cross-examination by President Mahama’s lead counsel, Tony Lithur, who insists on going through the contents of thousands of the almighty pink sheets one after another, will take the hearing through one whole millennium, two centuries and forty-five clear days if he has his way.
Maddeningly slow though Lithur’s cross-examination strategy may be, it is nonetheless a necessary inconvenience we should endure in order to be able to arrive at the truth and enhance the quality of the judgment to come. That is the other view.
Hey, good people, let us take a low bow for Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia for spending a quarter of day on his feet under cross-examination, someone said last week after Lithur was done with cross-examining the 2012 NPP Vice-presidential candidate and the petitioners’ star witness.
One physiologist appeared far from amused and told the media that Dr. Bawumia might count himself lucky, healthy or both, that he survived standing on his feet for an eternity without any fatal mishap. I wonder how 2012 NPP presidential candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo, would have fared in Bawumia’s shoes.
There is a debatable opinion to the effect that being a veteran lawyer with near-infinite experience in evidence submission, the psychology of cross-examination and the gimmicks and stage craft of the court room at his fingertips, and also having been the presidential candidate of the NPP at the election, Nana Akufo-Addo should have been the petitioners’ star witness.
While acknowledging his fairly impressive performance as the petitioners’ lead witness so far, some think Lithur’s cross-examination may have exacted its toll on Dr. Bawumia and he may not fare well under further cross-examination by the legal teams of the other respondents.
Counsel for the Electoral Commission, James Quarshie-Idun, has started his cross-examination but Counsel for the National Democratic Congress, Tsatsu Tsikata, is yet to take his turn digging into Dr. Bawumia’s evidence and it is uncertain what strange screeching rabbits Tsikata in particular might pull out of his legal robes.
Anyhow, apparently worried about Bawumia’s marathon performance as courtroom sentry, the justices of the supreme court moved to stop Lithur from murdering any hapless witnesses right on their feet.
They ordered counsel to restrict his cross -examination to essential submissions and arguments with the potential to affect the outcome of the hearing, by making available to the court and petitioners advance electronic copies of pink sheets he intended to use in his cross-examination.
Lithur appeared a bit unsettled by last week’s court order, but this week, he got his mojo back. Like a perfect gentleman out to kill, he kept his pink-sheet-by-pink-sheet crusade to weaken the evidence of over-voting, voting at unauthorised polling stations, voting without biometric identification and unsigned pink sheets which the petitioners say form the basis upon which they are demanding that the Supreme Court nullify 2.6 million votes from President Mahama’s tally.
The initial demand was for a nullification of 4, 670, 504 votes.
By mid-day of day five this week, Lithur was in the heat of a counter- attack against Dr. Bawumia’s assault on the integrity of the poll. At a calculatedly cold, measured and methodological pace, the president’s counsel undertook to repaint the picture of systematic and widespread rigging the witness painted of the elections on day two of the hearing.
He also kept up his bid to prove that pink sheets not included in the original evidence submitted to the court and the respondents had been smuggled into the evidence now being submitted by
Dr. Bawumia to the court, to swell the numbers of allegedly stolen votes.
The petitioners who had initially claimed that evidence of rigging was to be found in 11,138 pink sheets later deleted 700 sheets from the lot and these may have been inadvertently included in the number of sheets in counsel’s possession, Dr. Bawumia explained during cross-examination this week.
The case at the Supreme Court ate up a puzzling if also most worrying incident this week: How a hundred million defective Chinkese jackboots found their way into town is a puzzle. It had the chaps at the Food and Drugs Board scratching their skulls and health authorities worried that it could take Ghana on a trek back to those days when HIV infection rates spiraled close to five per cent per annum.
There is a Chinese man in every news headline in Ghana these days: “Chinese armed robber kills friend’, “Chinese man carves up four compatriots with knife over girl- friend”, “Unauthorized Chinese miners in clash with farming community,” “Chinese miners destroy farmlands”, “Chinese women traffickers grabbed” etc.
The tale about crooked businessmen and lawless immigrants throwing monkey wrenches in the works as nations and national leaders try to forge mutually beneficial economic partnerships and friendships is a familiar one but nothing beats Ghana-China relations in diplomatic weirdness, whatever you perceive that to be, Jomo.
Here is a parting note, old chap: During Lithur’s cross-examination of Dr. Bawumia this week, there appeared to be a disagreement over the question of whether or not the numbers of spoiled ballot papers should be added to the numbers of valid votes cast at polling stations in accounting for the numbers of ballot booklets and papers issued by the Electoral Commission to polling stations.
Imagine that! I hope the psychological and emotional strain is not loosening some bolts and nuts in our skulls, Jomo.
Article by George Sydney Abugri
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