PRESS RELEASE

A clearly frustrated Tsatsu Tsikata, Counsel for 3rd Respondents in the ongoing Presidential Election Petition at the Supreme Court, on Monday morning lost his cool and threw tantrums at his learned colleague, Philip Addison, who represents the petitioners, and ordered him to “shut up”.

Lawyer Tsatsu Tsikata, who represents the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the case - and who was cross examining Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, main witness of the petitioners - lost his cool as Counsel Philip Addison rose to object to a question he had posed to the witness on its relevancy to the issues being determined by the court.

But even before Counsel Philip Addison could make his objection, Lawyer Tsikata angrily exclaimed “would you shut up there” to the surprise of all present as the language was unexpected from members of the legal profession.

Interestingly, Counsel Tsatsu Tsikata is the one who had throughout the trial loudly insisted on the need for his colleague learned counsels to uphold what he termed as the “high ethical standards of the legal profession” and therefore comes as a shock that he would abandon those standards and rather go on the path of using unsavory words and losing his temper in the courtroom.

Counsel Philip Addison who did not take kindly to the rude words used by Tsatsu Tsikata protested and urged the court to call the Counsel for 3rd respondents to order especially as he had developed a tradition of using insulting words in the courtroom since the case commenced. However, though the court did not issue a direct caution to the lawyer, with Presiding Judge William Atuguba urging all lawyers to go back to the rules of the game to preserve decency in the court.

Counsel Tsatsu Tsikata in previous days has come under a barrage of criticisms for what had become a boring cross examination of the main witness with many commentators including some lawyers questioning the hype around him which suggested time and again that he was a legal genius.

Before he commenced his cross examination, Counsel Tsatsu Tsikata was touted by the NDC and its commentators as their “legal Maradona” whose cross examination would collapse the case of the petitioners.

However, after four days of cross examination, the expected demolition of the petitioners’ case has not been witnessed with the lawyer virtually repeating the same cross examination tactics adopted by Counsel for John Mahama, 1st Respondent in the case, Tony Lithur which was seen as largely being pointless and irrelevant to the two issues being determined by the court, that is, whether there were irregularities in the conduct of the December 7th Elections and whether those irregularities, if any, affected the outcome of the December Presidential elections.

Earlier in his cross examination, Counsel Tsatsu Tsikata produced letters supposedly signed by the 1st petitioner, Nana Akufo-Addo delegating polling agents to some unknown polling stations but after a thorough check of the letters, Dr. Bawumia revealed that though the letters were purported to have been written between the 5th and 7th December 2012, the letters were amazingly received on the 3rd December suggesting that they could be possible fakes.