Mahama Forced To Rely On Asiedu Nketia and Kpessa Whyte As Witnesses In Election Petitions

Two of the five witnesses that are to testify for former President John Mahama in the 2020 petition have been unveiled.
They are General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr. Johnson Asiedu Nketia and former head of the National Service Scheme, Dr. Michael Kpessa Whyte.

Dr. Kpessa Whyte is also one of two people who had represented Mr. Mahama in the Collation Room of the Electoral Commission (EC) during the assemblage of the results.
The Senior Lecturer at the University of Ghana has already filed his witness statement; so has Mr. Asiedu Nketia.

They both did so yesterday in order to beat a tight Supreme Court deadline.
Because of the tightness of the deadline to file witness statements, Mr. Mahama and his legal team will only depend on the two witnesses instead of the five that he had earlier announced he would be calling.

Mr. Mahama had earlier protested the Supreme Court’s decision not to allow an application for allowance to serve interrogatories to the EC. After the court had dismissed the application, it had gone on to direct that Mr. Mahama files his witness statements within 12 hours.
The former President thought otherwise and rather asked the court to review its decision to disallow the interrogatories. According to him, the interrogatories would be key to the witness statements that he would file.

However, the court refused and warned it had the power to sanction the legal team of the former President and also dismiss the election petition prematurely. It had then directed the former President to file his witness statements within a day.
Out of the constraint of time, apparently, Mr. Mahama has been forced to settle on two witnesses instead of five.