Election Petition: Mahama refusing to testify – Frank Davies
Mr. Frank Davies, one of the lawyers for President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s legal team in the election petition case says ex-President John Dramani Mahama is afraid to testify in court.
Mr. Davies made the claim on Friday, January 29, 2021, when he addressed the press shortly after the Supreme Court adjourned the case to Monday.
According to him, failure by Mahama to testify means he does not believe in his own case before the court.
“It is very instructive to let all Ghanaians know that…the petitioner himself has no witness statement before the court. This is a petitioner who seeks to have the 2020 presidential elections annulled and is praying for a rerun. This same person is refusing to come and give evidence in court,” he said.
Mr. Davies also blasted Johnson Asiedu Nketia, General Secretary of the NDC over some utterances he made in court on Friday.
Mr. Nketia who was presented as a witness by ex-President John Mahama answered: “I don’t speak for the petitioner” several times during his cross-examination in court.
Mr. Davies who could not take such excuses lambasted Mr. Nketia accusing him of trying to be “elusive and evasive.”
“When Mr. Asiedu Nketia mounted the witness box in court today. He was largely evasive and for every question that was posed to him, his immediate response was that ‘I do not speak for the petitioner’. This is someone who in paragraph two of his own witness statement stated clearly that he was to lend aid to the petition filed by the petitioner.”
“So how can you come to court as a witness for a party and when you are asked questions in court, your response is that I don’t speak for the petitioner? Then why are you in the court? He thinks he can be evasive and elusive as he was in 2012 and 2013. This time around, he would not be lucky,” he said.
Earlier in court
The Supreme Court prior to the cross-examination struck out portions of the witness statement filed by Mr. Asiedu Nketia.
This was after Akoto Ampaw, the lead lawyer for President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, asked the Supreme Court to expunge portions of Mr. Nketia’s statement.
Mr. Ampaw argued that ten paragraphs in Asiedu Nketia’s statement should be taken off because they were “not based on the pleadings of the petitioner, unduly prejudicial and scandalous”.
The lead counsel for the petitioner, Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata, however, opposed the objections raised.
Mr. Tsikata insisted that every paragraph in Asiedu Nketia’s statement was “material” to their case.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court in its ruling struck out seven out of the ten paragraphs that President Akufo-Addo’s lawyer objected to.
The paragraphs struck out are 6,7,25,26,28,30 and 37.
