Election Petition: Late Tsatsu ‘scolded’ but admitted
The Supreme Court hearing the Election Petition challenging the validity of the 2012 presidential election results on Wednesday unanimously granted leave to Mr Tsatsu Tsikata, lead counsel for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to file his written address to the court out of stipulation.
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But that was not before some scolding from the bench which observed that its orders were to be obeyed rather than taken lightly, especially so when being the highest court of the land, the lower courts take counsel from how matters are conducted there.
All other parties - the petitioners, the first and second respondents had complied with the court's July 30 deadline for the simultaneous filing of the addresses except the third respondent - NDC.
The NDC's address was filed Wednesday at 9:50am. It has 69-pages with additional large volumes of attachments.
When the court resumed sitting Wednesday morning, Mr Tsikata explained the lateness was due to his personal fault and asked for leave from the court for the late filing.
He said the delay in filing was occasioned by the fact that they needed to have the more than 10 appendixes bound together in one volume with the address itself.
Counsel for the petitioners, Mr Philip Addison who raised an objection insisted, “court orders are meant to be obeyed”.
“When the third respondent realised they could not meet the deadline given by the court, the proper thing to do was to bring a formal application before the deadline because they must have been aware they could not meet the deadline,” he argued.
Addison said the order of the court was for all parties to file simultaneously.
They delayed filing and they have been served with our address. They delayed filing obvioulsy spent the whole night going through our address.
“Looking into their eyes, obviously they have had no sleep at all, " Addison said.
At this point Mr Tony Lithur, counsel for President John Mahama interjected Addison and said counsel was making a desperate suggestion.
Addision continued that having taken ideas and inspiration from what has been done by the petitioners, they come this morning meekly to seek leave orally.
"My Lord this is what is called communist inferior tactics. I thought that with the breakdown of communism, we'd have seen the end of these kind of tactics. But well here we are today, they have come here asking for leave orally after the event”.
Mr Tsatsu Tsikata responded and indicated he had a long sleep last night.
"My Lords I may say that I have not up till now actually seen a copy of their address"
“I had taken the view that we could file it as loose documents but based on the advice of some colleagues to mechanically bind them, we decided to do so”.
He explained they had their address and appendixes completed ahead of time and at the last minute they didn’t think, “your lordships should have loose documents.”
"We had to face the mechanical challenge which I personally did not anticipate the length of time of binding the appendixes with the address itself.
He said he did not expect the petitioners to raise an objection because in fairness they have not taken advantage of the lateness in filing and that the suggestion that they have looked at the petitioners sumbission and taken inspiration was offensive to him.
"I do not respectively think that there is any inspiration to be taken from the conduct of my learned friends in this case."
Mr Tony Lithur had wanted to contribute to the argument but the court denied him explaining he had no right to reply considering he had already filed his address.
The president of the nine-member panel, Justice William Atuguba remarked that Tsatsu's reply that throughout the case there was nothing inspiration from his learned friends was in bad taste and asked him to withdraw, which Mr Tsikata did.
Justice William Atuguba in delibering the ruling on the matter said, “we note that the act that caused the delay in complying with the dateline of July 30, 2013 for filing addresses was for the benefit of this court”.
“Nonetheless, counsel should have as a senior counsel been guided by the reasonable foreseeability test in preparing his loose addresses.”
“It must not lightly be thought that court orders are any but solemn matters which ought to be treated as such".
The court said considering the close extent of the delay, the third respondent’s address was filed at 9:50am Wednesday morning and in the fact that, the sins of counsel should not be visited on the head of the client and that in the convenience of the court, which was the mischief aimed at in defaulting to comply with the time limit set, and the sheer magnitude and gravity of the case,
“We waive the default and admit the address as filed by on behalf third respondent”
The court subsequently adjourned to Wednesday August 7, 2013 as a tentative date for all the parties to be heard orally by way of clarifications and additions in their addresses to the court.
The address is to be made within 30 minutes each.
The tentative date followed suggestions that the 7th August could be declared a holiday to climax the month of Islamic Ramadan.
The court said the oral addresses would not be an opportunity for the parties to re-open their cases but would be heavily curtailed to the two areas of clarifications and additions.
By Enoch Darfah Frimpong / Graphic.com.gh / Ghana
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