On Submitted Pink Sheets

Ever since the NPP’s unsuccessful presidential candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and Co started the Supreme Court (SC) petition case challenging the results of the 2012 Presidential Election, Ghanaians are still grappling with the exact number of pink sheets their lawyers filed with their affidavits in court.

Ghanaians have heard Mr Philip Addison, the lead counsel of the petitioners and Dr Mahamadu Bawumia, the star witness of the NPP, changing the exact number of pink sheets they filed with the SC at every given turn. We have variously heard the NPP say that they filed 11,842 pink sheets, scaled it down to 11,802 before landing at 10,119.

We have also seen the numbers of pink sheets submitted by the NPP balloon to 13,928 after some mysterious boxes of pink sheets were added to the boxes of pink sheets lodged at the Registrar’s office by some invisible hands.

And if you hear Philip Addison explaining how they came by the final figure, you get more confused as he chisels some numbers from court registry, pads them up with the control pink sheets lodged at the offices of the Presiding Judge, Justice William Atuguba.

It turns out that it is not only those outside the courtroom who are confused by the pink sheet dribbling magician Philip Addison. Otherwise, when the Justices met the lawyers of the petitioners and respondents to seek clarification on some of the issues they raised in their addresses, one of the Justices would not have asked Philip Addison to elaborate more on the exact number of pink sheets he filed at the court.

That was when Philip Addison, again started the “sermon on the pink sheet”. We heard him adding pink sheets numbers from the registry, KPMG’s rejected sheets, Justice Atuguba’s office and recoveries from some unclear pink sheets making everybody who was listening more confused than ever before.

The confusion in the number of pink sheets filed emanates from the diabolical plans hatched by whoever smuggled the boxes of pink sheets to the registrar’s office. Apart from the registry which has the set of exhibits sneaked in at the last moment none of the respondents and the Justices have that kind of exhibits. That was why the KPMG Representative, Mr Nii Dodoo, pointedly told the court that there seems not to be enough copies of some pink sheets for everyone.

Do you remember that during the audit of the pink sheets, we had situations whereby there were same exhibit numbers with two different polling stations? Do you also recall that there were many exhibits outside the range of exhibits? When these issues popped up Philip Addison and his team could have done one simple thing.

All the NPP needed to do was to go back to the SC and ask for the leave of the court to make corrections on any of the mislabelling that they did. That is the way to go! We heard Dr Bawumia telling the court on multiple occasions that they did some mislabelling of some exhibits, yet the NPP did not attempt to make those corrections during the proceedings.

What probably Philip Addison and his team is thinking is that it is the job of the Justices of the SC to do the corrections for them, that is why they decided not to do any corrections on the mislabelling of submitted pink sheets, thus pushing them to change the number of pink sheets submitted every single day.

I want to make it boldly clear that it is not the responsibility of the Justices to make corrections for the petitioners. If you have mislabelled an exhibit, you have to seek leave and make corrections. The court will never do it for you.

Another issue that the NPP folks have to know is that if your exhibits in court are mislabelled, how can you get the Justices depend on them? This is never done in any courts of law. If your exhibit or evidence in court is unclear and looks murky and you do not make any effort to correct it, the best thing a justice siting on your case can do is to discard that exhibit or evidence.

The way the NPP lawyers did not make any corrections to their mislabelling of exhibits submitted makes you wonder if they understand simple court procedures. And you are dealing with lawyers who have been in court for years. At this juncture, I want to say that the confusion about the exhibits submitted by the NPP still remains unsolved and unsolved mysteries do not win cases in court.

nakuakoduah@yahoo.com