By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

The dastardly attempt by the Mahama-appointed National Security Coordinator to strong-arm the Registrar of the Supreme Court of Ghana into handing over keys to the vault holding the disputed pink sheets which contain a detailed record voting in Election 2012, points clearly to one thing - Tsatsu "The Thief" Tsikata may have over-reached himself by fiercely disputing the number of pink-sheet exhibits tendered in evidence by the star-witness in the Akufo-Addo petition (See "National Security Denies Interfering With Judicial Process" MyJoyOnline.com/ Ghanaweb.com 5/11/13).

Several problems arise here, vis-a-vis Justice William Atuguba's decision to allow Mr. Tsikata to have his way, by inadvisably ordering a recounting of the tendered pink sheets by KPMG, the globally reputed accounting firm. There is a significant problem here because the Supreme Court ought to have ordered a recounting of the proverbial smoking-gun the very moment that they were tendered in evidence by Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the second petitioner and vice-presidential candidate of the main opposition New Patriotic Part (NPP) for Election 2012, led by Mr. Philip Addison.

Consequently, should KPMG come up short of the number of pink sheets admitted into evidence by the Atuguba-presided Supreme Court, the latter stands to bear full responsibility for any such discrepancy that may arise. Furthermore, the allegedly "unsolicited" attempt by Lt.-Col. Gbevlo-Lartey and his National Security Agency staff to assume control of the vault containing the pink sheets ought to open the eyes of the global community to the crude politics of intimidation characteristically and routinely employed by the ruling National Democratic Congress, which has impeded the salutary administration of justice in the country for some three decades now.

And, to be certain, it is also for this reason why televising the NPP petition could not have come at a more opportune moment in the development of Ghanaian democracy. Predictably, the key operatives of the ruling National Democratic fought tooth-and-nail to prevent Chief Justice Theodora Wood from allowing television cameras into the court-room.

The flagrant misbehavior of Col. Gbevlo-Lartey and his men from the national security establishment could also point to the fact that counsel for the third respondent, or the National Democratic Congress, could well have deliberately and criminally tampered with the number of "discovery" copies of pink sheets made available to him and his client by the petitioners by drastically reducing to 8,000 from the original 11,842, or so, and then callously and jejunely crying foul.

This theory is not very hard to arrive at, for Mr. Tsikata has a criminal record, a record of theft of taxpayer funds, for which the unconvicted ideational butcher behind the Rawlings-chaperoned death-squads and the so-called People's Tribunals of the 1980s spent jail time at the Nsawam Medium-Security Prison.

The Supreme Court needs to seriously explore this dimension of the man's character, should the KPMG audit come up short of the number of pink sheets originally tendered in evidence by Dr. Bawumia and Mr. Addison and admitted as such by the Supreme Court.

What I am trying to suggest here is that it is not totally inconceivable for the Mahama government and/or some of its supporters and sympathizers to have conspired and colluded with agents within the national security establishment and the judicial service to drastically tamper with the original forensic evidence tendered by Dr. Bawumia. And so, really, the onus of the integrity of the pink sheets tendered in evidence by Mr. Philip Addison, the lead-counsel for the petitioners, squarely rests with the Atuguba Court.

Messrs. Lithur, Tsikata and Quarshie-Idun also have some explaining to do vis-a-vis the exact number of pink sheets tendered in evidence, particularly regarding why they have tarried until now to raise any critical objections to the aforesaid effect.

__________________________________________________ *Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D. Department of English Nassau Community College of SUNY Garden City, New York May 11, 2013 E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net ###