Anin Yeboah’s Supreme Court Accused of Unfair Antics in Election Petition Hearing

The Supreme Court panel hearing the 2020 election petition has been accused of unfairness by lawyers for former President John Mahama after the court rejected a number of preliminary applications by the legal team and railroading them into a date for the hearing of the substantive case.

These antics compelled the lead Counsel for Mr. Mahama, Tsatsu Tsikata to famously retort that “Justice must not be sacrificed for expedition”.
Tsikata told the Justices that their decision to disallow his team from filing the interrogatories so they can elicit answers from the EC is unfair.
And according to Mr. Tsikata, the unfairness is especially so because, without allowing Mr. Mahama’s side to iron out and reconcile such issues which are important to their case, the court has also ordered that they file witness statements tomorrow.

“…so we are going to have one day within which to supply five witnesses, I think it’s not fair to us. We have indicated that we have five witnesses we may end up not calling five witnesses but in any case, we have now, today until tomorrow in order to prepare witness statements,” Mr. Tsikata protested.
The revered Lawyer also said the surprise pulled on his team by the Supreme Court, is essentially trying to force them to be superhuman since it usually takes more than one day to prepare comprehensive witness statements.

And the fact that all the applications dismissed by the court would have aided the team’s preparation of the witness statements makes it unfair on the part of the panel to force them to file witness statements by tomorrow.
The sentiment is shared by a member of former President Mahama’s team, former Attorney General, Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong who said she was shocked at the behavior of the Supreme Court panel.

“That means we have just one day to prepare the witness statements…All those things will have an impact on the kind of witness statements we will prepare and file. So if those issues have not been dealt with, those applications have not been dealt with, how do we file witness statements by close of business on the 21st?” The former Attorney General charged.
“For us it is shocking, it really doesn’t make sense to us as lawyers who have been practicing in the courts for so many years and we know what the rules are.”

The 12 interrogatories, including a request for the EC to confirm that the transfer of the 2020 election results had been partly done by the National Communications Authority (NCA) had been filed by Mr. Mahama on Tuesday. However, the court dismissed it saying the issues have already been raised in the Response of the EC.
The Mahama legal team has since filed for Judicial Review of the dismissal of that application which the panel has fixed for the 28th of January.

Yesterday, Mr. Mahama also filed an application to inspect the documents of the EC and be allowed to make copies of those documents, these too the Supreme Court panel headed by Chief Justice Kwesi Anin Yeboah dismissed.
Then after dismissing all of these applications, the panel went on to fix January 26th as date for the start of the hearing of the substantive case. The Presiding judge, Anin Yeboah, read the mode of trial.

“The petitioner and the witnesses shall file witness statements with exhibits if any, by noon of Thursday, the 21st of January 2021; the witness statement shall be served on the Counsel for the respondents by the close of the day of Thursday, the 21st of January, 2021,” the court ruled.