The EC Must Be Resisted Vehemently At the Supreme Court

A member of NPP UK communication team, Mr Peter Antwi Boasiako, has advised strongly the legal team of the petitioners to ardently resist the Electoral Commission (EC) at the Supreme Court (SC) with respect to the way the EC's lawyers are trying to ambush the court with the so-called original pink sheets and other documents which should have been tendered in by the EC as their counter evidence, as instructed by the SC.

In an exclusive interview on Sources Radio in London, Mr Antwi Boasiako indicted the EC for declaring Mr John Dramani Mahama as president based on error results as the Respondents' lawyers claim.

He then advised on two main issues for the petitioners' lawyers to consider, saying the lawyers for the EC & John Mahama have argued that, because the NPP agents signed the pink sheets without challenging the results at the polling stations, the said results therefore must be upheld. “Meanwhile, there are over 1,800 pink sheets in evidence which were not signed by the EC's returning officers; the reasons for not signing are still unknown.

Mr Antwi argued that, “by inference, can one then conclude by saying that, automatically the EC has admitted for the pink sheets which were not signed by its own presiding officers to authenticate the results should therefore be cancelled? (I can see a clear blow at the EC)”. He added, per the EC's ground rules, an agent's signature does not exclusively authenticate results but the EC presiding officer's signature does.

In other words, the presiding officer can go ahead to start election at a polling station and declare result even if an agent refuses to sign. So, why should the petitioners or the SC accept the results on pink sheets if the ECs own officers refused to or did not sign?

Touching on the last Thursday's proceedings' at the SC, Mr Antwi contented the EC lawyers attempted to blindfold everyone in the court room including the Judges. The EC lawyers printed out data from one of the Biometric Verification Machines allegedly used at one of the polling stations in contention, and intended to tender it as evidence, fortunately though, the petitioners' lawyers' objection was upheld.

In stating his reasons for the petitioners lawyers to countervail the ECs attempts to tender in unknown documents as evidence; he explained, it is on record that the 2nd respondent cancelled results from some polling stations due to over voting but in the affidavits sent to the Petitioners, there was nowhere that the 2nd respondent (EC) mentioned or indicated that before cancelling the results at the polling stations, a voting data on the biometric verification machines were printed out in order to compare with the tallied results on the pink sheets before that decision was taken to cancel them at the polling stations.

The EC Officers actually cancelled the results based on the recorded figures found on the faces of the pink sheets at the polling stations. Therefore, why should the EC be allowed to print out data from the Verification Machines of the polling stations facing over voting challenge, so as to compare with the declared results being challenged at the Supreme Court? I can't get it; he said.

He continued, “Moreover, at the moment, we don't know if the data stored on the Biometric Verification Machines can be altered or have already been altered”. Mr Antwi said, by allowing the EC to retrieve print outs from the machines purported to have been used at polling stations in contention with over voting, would mean that, the EC will seek time to recall for all the machines across the country, and also seek time to print out data from them for presentation, which EC should have done so before added them to the affidavits presented to the Petitioners for prior checks in order to avoid delays”. (A clear area the EC shall introduce a delay).

I really don't think the EC deserves to be given any opportunity to use data printout from the machines as evidence. The Petitioners lawyers should agree to such printouts only if they have expertise to assure them that the data on those machines could not be tampered or have not been altered; he added.

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