The Supreme Court last Friday issued another administrative directive, setting out a new mode for cross-examination of Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP’s) star witness in the election petition case in which he, Nana Akufo-Addo and Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey are challenging the results of the 2012 presidential elections.

The new directive, akin to the earlier administrative directive from Chief Justice Georgina Wood that the television cameras should be brought to the courtroom for a live telecast of proceedings, has excited the litigants- the NPP- while President John Mahama and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) sides have been angered by it.

The Herald has learnt that the latest administrative directive might just result in a hot confrontation between some of the respondents’ lawyers and the Supreme Court Justices today when cross examination of Dr. Bawumia resumes.

The nine-member panel of Supreme Court judges in a letter copied to all parties in the election petition case directed the Counsel for President Mahama, who is the first respondent, Tony Lithur to list all duplicated pink sheets and send an electronic version of the lists to the court and to the petitioners.

The letter signed by the presiding judge, William A. Atuguba claims the new method is to expedite the hearing of the petition but insiders on the side of President Mahama and NDC are shocked at the directive saying, “it is unprecedented in the history of court”.

According to them, the directive which was titled “Mode Of Continuation of Cross-Examination Of 2nd Petitioner On Pink Sheets”, amounts to showing your secret weapon to the enemy, as such it will be rejected because it is “totally an unusual directive”.

Justice Atuguba’s letter claims that “in order to expedite the hearing of the petition, the panel hereby directs that the cross-examination on the pink sheets be continued as follows:

That “Counsel for the 1st Respondent do list out the residue of the pink sheets in the manner here to be identified by him in his cross-examination of the 2nd petitioner which he claims were duplicated, in their mode and manner of generation and extent of their use by the petitioners for the purposes of proof of their petition”.

It directed that “The said list should be electronically served forthwith by counsel for the 1st respondent on all other parties”, adding “at the resumed sitting on Monday, 22/04/2013 counsel for the 1st respondent may put the said list by way of further cross-examination to the 2nd petitioner for his response”.

“The said list can then be tended in evidence” it said and concluded that “Counsel for the 1st respondent or any other party may bring along with him his or their copies of the pink sheets”.

But The Herald gathers that the directive, takes away the element of surprise from the cross examination which is an essential ingredient in court. The point is also made that Dr. Bawumia and the other petitioners produced the Pink Sheets to the Supreme Court, and as such knew the ones he duplicated and double counted.

Before this latest directive, a legal practitioner, Samson Lardy Ayenini, had expressed surprise at the decision by the judges at the Supreme Court to overrule an objection by respondents in the election petition on fresh documents tended in by the petitioners.

Dr. Bawumia, before he was cross examined, twice admitted to referring to an updated documents which he had prepared the previous night, tabling all the polling stations that the petitioners had deleted from their claims of over voting.

Lead Counsel for the third respondent, Tsatsu Tsikata had baited the witness to tender those documents, and immediately that was done he raised an objection and asked the court not to allow that. This was supported by Counsel for the other respondents in the EC.

According to the lead Counsel for the first respondent, Mr. Tony Lithur, the witness cannot amend his claims in the witness box. But lead Counsel for the petitioners, Philip Addison, explained that the petitioners were not “amending,” but “what we are seeing to do is to abandon part of the evidence.”

So controversial was this point that the judges had to take a break to consider a ruling. And just like on Wednesday, the respondents again lost as the judges overruled their objection.

President of the panel, Justice Atuguba explained that the respondents’ “objection is belated; it is therefore accordingly overruled”.

But in his analysis of the ruling, lawyer Samson Lardy Ayenini told Joy FM’s Top Story, he was shocked by the decision. “I was surprised at the outcome that they were overruled,” he stated.

Though he admitted, like many, he was learning a lot from the hearing, he suggested that the claim that the objection was belated left a lot to be desired.

He explained that since the petitioners had not tended in the document, legally, the respondents cannot object to the document. He said this informed the lead Counsel for the NDC, Tsatsu Tsikata, to bait the key witness to tender the document to pave way for the objection.

Mr. Samson Ayenini said had the court upheld the objection, the petitioners would have gone back to amend their petition to “cure the challenge that the updated documents pose to them”.

Before then, Sam George Nertey, a member of the NDC communication team, had questioned the Chief Justice’s directive for the live broadcast of proceedings in the on-going petition hearing, challenging the validity of the 2012 general elections.

He asked whether it is not “against the principle of no interference with regards the judicial process”.

“As part of standard procedure, it is known that when a panel is empanelled at the Supreme Court level to hear a case, they are no longer subject to direction from any individual in this country because we do not want anybody to have undue influence on the Lord Justices or any Judge that is supposed to sit on a matter,” he said.

The NDC communicator could not understand why the Chief Justice could unilaterally order for the live broadcast of Court proceedings after an oral request by Lawyers of the petitioners had been turned down by the panel of Judges sitting on the case.

Sam George Nertey made this submission during a panel discussion on Adom FM on last week Tuesday.

Though George Nertey believes that a live transmission of proceedings in the Supreme Court would not affect the substance of the matter being adjudicated upon, he was of the view that the CJ must come out to set the parameters for cases for which live broadcast could be needed.

“Because the next thing you would hear is that, someone would also request for a live broadcast of Kpegah and Akufo-Addo’s case,” he said.

In his words, the live telecast of the case “is going to put a stop to the skewed reportage that comes out of the court case because every time after court sittings, you hear both sides also come and address the press and you ask yourself if it is the same case these two people are contesting”.