The Key Witness in the election petition case has said in Court today, Thursday April 25, 2013 that the Respondents are “afraid of the truth”.

“They were afraid to receive the truth,” he told the Supreme Court in response to a question from the second respondent’s counsel which sought to indict him of duplicating election records in his analysis through which the Petitioners arrived at the conclusion that the 2012 election results were rigged.

Dr Bawumia who is under cross examination by the Electoral Commission’s Lawyer, Mr Quashie Idun, said on Thursday at the continuation of the case which is in its seventh day of hearing that: "It is not correct that there have been duplicates in my analysis".

He insisted that a reference to the soft-copy of the analysis on his CD-ROM will vindicate his repetitive assertion that though the election record sheets (pink sheets) were manually duplicated, none of them were used more than once in his analysis.

The second petitioner’s answer was in relation to some electoral data from the Ashanti region which were tendered in evidence by his counsel to buttress their argument that there were widespread irregularities, violations and omissions which led to the Electoral Commission’s declaration of the first respondent, President John Mahama, as winner of the 2012 presidential poll.

The Petitioners, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the main opposition New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) 2012 presidential candidate together with his running mate, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia and the party’s National Chairman Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey are challenging the validity of the 2012 presidential polls.

They claim there were widespread irregularities as well as strategically planned rigging, through the collusion of the first respondent, President John Mahama and the second respondent, the Electoral Commission.

They therefore are praying the Supreme Court to annul results in over 11,000 polling stations where they claim massive and strategic rigging occurred.

Dr Bawumia has been under cross-examination for the past five days after he was led in evidence by his lead Counsel, Philip Addison.

He is expected to be cross-examined by Counsel for the third respondent (NDC), Tsatsu Tsikata after the second respondent (EC) is done with its cross-examination.

A nine-member bench, Presided over by Justice William Atuguba is hearing the petition which is being broadcast live on state-owned Ghana Television (GTV) as well as numerous radio stations in the country.