...As He Scrambles For A Calculator
By Margaret Jackson
April 23, 2013
My mother will tell you that it does not look good if someone who is touted as being a good cook begins to shiver when the guests arrive to taste her food. To see someone like Dr Mahamadu Bawumia, the past NPP vice presidential candidate, who is touted as a renounced economist who can cram and throw numbers around asking for a calculator to do simple calculation which he even got wrong in the dock, speak volumes.
I said it from the very beginning when the on-going Supreme Court case challenging the 2012 Presidential Election, that Bawumia does not have what it takes to win the case for the NPP as their star evidence in chief.
Those who watched the cockiness, uneasiness, wry smile and a little bit of arrogance from Bawumia during intense cross-examination by Tony Lithur, counsel for the President Mahama, the first respondent in the case on Tuesday April 23 realized that the so-called trough of evidence that Bawumia gathered may be slipping from his hands in the witness box.
Many NPP lawyers who were in court could only console themselves by joining others to laugh whenever Bawumia resorts to his usual talking points that betray him big time as a pure novice in court.
What even ticked many people off was when Bawumia blazingly told the court that he sees the number one (1) on a pink results sheet as two (2). Not even when his attention was drawn by Tony Lithur multiple times that he was being disingenuous by repeatedly stating that the number two (2) when it was actually one (1) will Bawumia change his stand. Bawumia may be thinking that being cocky and exchanging words with the defence counsel in order to look intelligent and good whilst sacrificing the truth is the best strategy. But Bawumia is slowly but surely becoming NPP’s biggest nightmare as their “Prized Bull” is gradually being run aground or torn apart through his own gathered evidence.
The admission by Bawumia on multiple times that there were no over-voting in areas that they have captured in their evidence made some NPP lawyers cringe in their seats in court.
And a home run for Tony Lithur was when Bawumia again admitted that the NPP agents at all the polling stations signed their pink results sheets after the voting and not a single one of them raised any complaint on the spot about any illegality or irregularity. No single NPP polling agent raised any alarm or presented any evidence of illegality or irregularity throughout the country.
For the information of readers, there are two opportunities where an agent can raise a complaint or objection on the spot if he/she is not happy with the way the election was conducted. It can be done at the polling station or the collation centre. If a complaint or objection is raised by an agent, then it becomes the subject matter of investigation.
But if for any reason an agent fails to file a complaint or object to the conduct of the elections at the polling station or the collation centre, no party can come back and claim that they have been cheated. That is the law which is currently biting the NPP so hard.
Another stinker brought before the attention of the court was the assertion made by the NPP’s 2012 Campaign Manager, Mr Boakye Agyarko, when he held a press conference at the end of the elections and declared that the 2012 Elections was by far the most transparent and cleanest in the history of the 4th Republic.
Mr Lithur then wondered why Bawumia is crying wolf when his own campaign manager has given thumps up to the conduct of the 2012 elections. This is a piece of information that the NPP’s counsel, Philip Addison fought hard to prevent the court fro hearing.
Bawumia who has feigned ignorance to many rules of the EC is seen as conducting an academic exercise after the elections. What is now emerging is that the NPP seems to have done nothing on the ground during voting day.
Gradually many NPP die-hards are folding their arms thinking that it is Bawumia’s case. And the day the NPP will lose, I bet a stone will definitely be given to me by the NPP.
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