Petitioners Lawyers In Drinking Binge

By Nana Akua Tweneboah-Koduah

Mr Philip Addison, lead counsel for the petitioners in the on-going challenge to the results of the 2012 Presidential Election gave a firm promise at the Supreme Court on Thursday July 11. He told the court that he will provide the respondents on Friday July 12 with the rest of the pink sheets that he will use to cross-examine Dr Afari Gyan. In fact he promised that the respondents were going to have the pink sheets by 12 noon on that day.

Turns out that Mr Addison was just deceiving the respondents. When the 44th sitting of the Supreme Court petition case resumed on Monday July 15 the three respondents all cried foul. They told the court that Mr Addison did not live by his word as the pink sheets given to them fell short of what was required.

In fact, Mr James Quarshie-Idun told the court that the petitioners gave them only 547 pink sheets and even with that many of the sheets were blank and unreadable. Dr Basit Bamba also joined the chorus by telling the court that the NPP supplied him with a list but with no matching pink sheets, while Mr Tsatsu Tsikata also hammered home the point that he also received a list but when he did a random check with the 547 list given to the Electoral Commission by the petitioners he realized that they did not match the list he was provided.

Mr Addison, who felt embarrassed and saw his back being pushed to the wall then interjected that they were unable to provide the pink sheets to the first and third respondents due to some genuine challenges involving the printing of the pink sheets.

I wholly agree with Mr Addison that he indeed faced some ‘genuine challenges’ over the weekend which contributed towards his inability to provide the respondents with the documents that he promised.

Why wouldn’t Philip Addison face some challenges in providing the respondents with pink sheets that he promised when he was caught all the way in Kumasi over the weekend in the company of Mr Frank Davies and Professor Ken Attafuah in a boozing spree at several spots.

All the three lawyers mentioned are part of the team of lawyers for the petitioners. My sources in Kumasi have told me that the three lawyers were apparently in Kumasi to attend a lodge meeting and found time to engage in merry-making at different locations whilst they cared less about the pink sheets that they were required to supply to the respondents.

A sober Addison, then appeared in court on Monday and lied to the court that he had some genuine challenges which were why he was unable to provide the pink sheets to the respondents. Mr Addison, probably thinking that no one spotted him and the other lawyers drinking and laughing it off in Kumasi, wanted Ghanaian to believe his cock and bull story.

The NPP is in court challenging the veracity of the 2012 polls. They initially gave the false impression that they cannot wait more than two weeks for the case to be determined by the Supreme Court. But Mr Addison who started his cross-examination on June 5 seems to be staggering the examination to keep his false hopes of winning the case alive.

He has been going on and on without any solid evidence to give him a break in the petition case. That is why he is still keeping Dr Afari Gyan in the witness box as long as it takes.

Do you think that if Mr Addison is very serious about the early determination of the case he will go on a boozing binge in Kumasi over the weekend and return to court and give some flimsy excuses? The overall strategy that has been adopted by the NPP is to prolong the case in order to create some uncertainty in the country.

At this point everybody who is following the case can read the body language of the nine justices and the feeling is that they want Philip Addison to end his cross-examination. The justices have all the evidence to make a firm determination of the case.

What Addison is doing is not going to add anything new to the case, therefore, the earlier he ends the cross-examination the better it would be for him. His fishing expedition is taking him nowhere and is rather making a mockery of himself.

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