By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
On April 30, 2013, Mr. Samuel Nartey George, a member of the so-called National Democratic Congress' Communications Team, accused the petitioners challenging the legitimacy of President John Dramani Mahama of risking the possibility of a criminal trial because it appeared as if Messrs. Akufo-Addo, Bawumia and Obetsebi-Lamptey had submitted forged pink sheets in a sworn affidavit presented to the Atuguba-presided Supreme Court of Ghana (See "Akufo-Addo, Bawumia May Face Criminal Charges - NDC" JoyOnline.com/Ghanaweb.com 4/30/13).
This observation is very fascinating, coming from a prominent member of a political party that criminally finessed its way onto the landscape of Ghana's constitutional democratic culture, with most of its key operatives being granted prosecutorial indemnity via dubious clauses and provisos inserted into the country's Fourth-Republican Constitution.
Mr. George's argument is that the three lead petitioners of the Akufo-Addo Revolution "appear to have had problems with the compilation and submission of [pink-sheet] documents to the court, possibly forging some to buttress their case."
Indeed, in seeking a re-count of the proverbial smoking-gun that are the pink sheets, the lead attorney for the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr. Tsatsu "The Thief" Tsikata, has argued that it was 8,000 pink sheets that the petitioners submitted to the Atuguba Court, and not 11,842 pink sheets as originally announced by the petitioners and duly admitted into evidence by the Supreme Court and held in the custody of the Registrar of the Supreme Court.
Needless to say, if, as Mr. George maintains, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) petitioners had some difficulty in compiling the documents detailing the number of eligible Ghanaian voters who actually cast their ballots, as legally determined by the biometric voting machines, then any acts of criminality that may appear to have attended the aforesaid process, on the part of the petitioners, may well have to do with the fact of Dr. Afari-Gyan, himself, having criminally compromised the entire electoral process.
At the time of this writing (5/18/13), the star-witness in the Election 2012 petition, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, had been able to forensically convince the Atuguba Court that whatever errors might have appeared in his analysis and presentation of the available pink-sheet data, definitely had everything to do with the fact of the apparently deliberate fudging of facts and figures by Dr. Afari-Gyan and his salaried staff of the Electoral Commission.
But even more significantly, Dr. Bawumia highlighted the fact that any inadvertent analytical errors that he may have committed in his presentation of the evidence had been done in good faith, that is, without any mischief or malice; and that such errors had clearly in no way affected the presidential chances of either major candidate of Election 2012.
So far, we are elated to observe that their mischievous attempts to impugn the credibility of the star-witness of the Akufo-Addo Revolution has only ended up with the lawyers for the respondents remarkably boosting the credibility of the petitioners. For instance, his attempt to prove that over-voting had also occurred in the traditionally NPP stronghold of the Asante Region, merely ended up with Mr. Tsatsu "The Thief" Tsikata ironically and eloquently corroborating the long-held view and argument of Messrs. Akufo-Addo, Bawumia and Obetsebi-Lamptey that, in fact, there had been widespread over-voting deliberately and collusively orchestrated by Dr. Afari-Gyan and President Mahama in favor of the incumbent.
And so, yes, were the legal and judicial systems of Ghana in first-rate condition, some of the major players involved in the Election 2012 petition may well have had to face criminal charges as a corollary to the main case; but these criminal suspects are more likely to have emanated from the camp of the respondents, rather than the petitioners. I am also not ruling out a presidential pardon for Messrs. Mahama and Afari-Gyan down the proverbial pike.
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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English Nassau Community College of SUNY Garden City, New York May 18, 2013 E-mail: [email protected] ###