Supreme Court ready to crack the whip, seeks Sammy Awuku

The Supreme Court has warned yet again it will not sit by and watch irresponsible conduct that can lead the country into anarchy go unpunished, indicating clearly Monday morning it was ready to hand down sanctions against the erring and recalcitrant.

The Court has at its sitting Wednesday to continue the hearing of the election petition challenging the outcome of the 2012 presidential election has served notice it was going to deal with comments by a deputy Director of Communications of the New Patriotic Party, Sammy Awuku.

President of the Court, Justice William Atuguba specifically mentioned Sammy Awuku and asked if he was in court, explaining that the Court had been informed of his comments and interpretation of the Court's decisions at its last sitting on Monday.

Sammy Awuku is on record to have described the Supreme Court's warning to the media and party representatives last Monday as 'hypocritical and selective'.

Justice Atuguba pointed out that three issues had come to the attention of the court since its last sitting, one being a misreporting of its unanimous decision refusing the request by the petitioners to be given a soft copy of the report of auditing firm KPMG, which the court instructed to audit pink sheet evidence tendered by the petitioners. Sections of the media he said, had reported that the decision was a 7:2 majority. The 7:2 majority decision, he said, was in respect of the request of the petitioners for adjournment to enable them study the report submitted to the court by KPMG. But that error, he said the court was prepared to forgive but it insisted if the media lacked any explanation on proceedings, it needed to seek same since the misreporting nonetheless amounted to a breach of its several warnings and that further such abuses would not be spared.

Then there was a case of the Daily Guide newspaper which was said to have gone wild over it being mentioned over publications the court frowned upon.

Justice Atuguba said there was no need for the paper to go wild over court decisions and that it could do with decent language in its desire to sell.

'Then when we issued our final touchline warning which was on Monday, since then it has come to our notice that Mr. Sam Awuku, I understand that he's been coming to court, I've never known him anyway, but if he is here, we may like to … that he reacted to that statement in a certain way, is he here? I understand he has been coming…. Alright, he is not here so we'll advise ourselves when we break.'

'We will deal with this matter in due course because we have issued final warnings, final warnings… We explained the powers vested in us by the state but some people seem to be above them. You see our worry is that these things, call it political gain or whatever but it has some detrimental effect on the ordinary people, they rely on the leaders for information about important matters and they take it very seriously. And then you know, pent up feelings and finally the break out and these are the people who suffer, they die, properties lost and all that. Kenya we saw what happened when confidence was lost in the judiciary, thousand lives. We cannot sit here and allow that. Alright,' Justice Atuguba warned.

The court is continuing with the substantive case and has been hearing an application by the petitioners for the Electoral Commission to produce some 13 collation forms from the 2012 elections.

Story by Isaac Yeboah/Graphic.com.gh/Ghana
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