Tsatsu Tsikata
Lead counsel for former President John Dramani Mahama who is challenging the results of the 2020 Presidential election has written a letter to the Supreme Court asking it to allow him to make further arguments as to why the court should grant the petitioner leave to the-open his case and subpoena the EC Chairperson.
The court had scheduled today to give its ruling whether or not it is legally right to grant Mr. Mahama leave to re-open his case to serve a subpoena.
The letter states that the need for further arguments was as a result of questions asked by the panel of judges as to whether their earlier ruling that the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission cannot be compelled to testify did not debar her from being subpoenaed.
The letter says Tsatsu Tsikata, lead counsel wants to assist the court with some citations to assist the court as to whether their ruling debarred the EC boss from testifying.
The letter has stated eight (8) citations, including decided cases and some provisions of the 1992 Constitution.
Mr. Mahama who is challenging the results of the 2020 Presidential result is seeking to subpoena the EC boss, Jean Adukwei Mensa to testify as an adversarial witness otherwise known as hostile witness after the court dismissed his earlier application to order her to testify in the trial and be cross-examined.
He closed his case last week after calling three witnesses and the respondents in the matter – EC and President Akufo-Addo after cross examination of the witnesses of the petitioner elected not to adduce any further evidence in the trial, urging the court to determine the matter based on the evidence of the petitioner’s witnesses.
The decision did not go down well with lawyers for Mr. Mahama who argued that the EC Chairperson cannot evade cross examination as she had already elected to adduce evidence by way of filing a witness statement.
Tsatsu Tsikata, his lead counsel then filed an application urging the court to order the witness to testify but the court in a unanimous decision overruled the objection stating that that it would be going beyond its powers if it were to compel the EC Chairperson to testify in the trial.
The court held that it is a well settled principle of law that a court cannot compel a party in a case to adduce evidence.
Mr. Mahama’s lawyers later that day quickly filed a fresh motion to re-open his case to enable him to issue a subpoena to the EC Chairperson to mount the witness box and testify.
He states in the motion that he “believes that in the interest of justice, and of fair trial as required by the Constitution, that the court exercises its discretion to allow me to re-open my case in order to have the Chairperson of the 1st respondent (EC) and the Returning Officer of the Presidential election in respect of which this petition has been filed, to appear and testify in these proceedings,”.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak