General News of Tuesday, 19 January 2021

Source: www.ghanaweb.com

We are ready for case management despite delay tactics – Oppong Nkrumah

Kojo Oppong Nkrumah play videoKojo Oppong Nkrumah

Member of Parliament and caretaker information minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, has disclosed that the president’s legal team in the ongoing election petition was ready for case management as at Tuesday morning.

Oppong Nkrumah also accused the petitioners of deliberately slowing the process with an application for interrogatories targeted at the Electoral Commission. The application was dismissed by the Supreme Court principally citing lack of relevance.

Speaking on Asempa FM today, Nkrumah said: “As for his (Tsikata’s) Thursday proposition, we have seen that they want to delay the processes. When the court listened to both sides, they concluded that tomorrow morning at 9:30 am, we should come for case management.

“We are ready for case management, we already had our issues to present today. We will file our issues this evening or early tomorrow morning,” he added.

He also stressed the importance of case management, explaining that it helped lawyers on both sides to streamline issues that are outstanding so that with the direction of the court, specific issues can be addressed during the main hearing.

Earlier after the court adjourned sitting, Dominic Ayine, a member of the legal team for petitioner John Dramani Mahama, insisted that the petitioners were rather working to expedite the trial.

“We are committed to an expeditious trial. In fact our application on the contrary was the one that was designed to lead to an expeditious trial and we are very ready for this trial.

“They (respondents) thought this was going to be a walk in the park? Then what they saw today is a tip of the iceberg,” Ayine added.