STATEMENT: �Most Of Exhibits Are No Longer In Our Analysis� � Bawumia To Tsikata

Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, 2nd Petitioner in the ongoing Supreme Court Petition challenging the validity of the declaration of John Dramani Mahama as winner of the December 7th Presidential Elections, has told the court that most of the exhibits Counsel for the NDC, Tsatsu Tsikata presented to the court as being polling stations where over-voting did not occur, have already been deleted from the analysis of the petitioners and are no longer part of the 11,138 polling stations being challenged by the petitioners. Dr. Bawumia made this known on the 5th day of his cross examination by Tsatsu Tsikata who represents the 3rd Respondent, the National Democratic Congress. Counsel Tsatsu Tsikata had on Monday presented over sixty (60) pink sheets and claiming that on the face of those pink sheets, there was nothing to show that over voting occurred in such polling stations. Dr. Bawumia who was responding to those exhibits on Tuesday morning told the court that most of those 60 exhibits which had been presented by the counsel no longer formed part of the 11,138 polling stations being challenged by the petitioners as they had been deleted from the analysis of the petitioners as being polling stations affected by over-voting. It would be recalled that though the petitioners originally submitted pink sheets from 11,842 polling stations across the country, Dr. Bawumia, while presenting his evidence-in-chief to the court, indicated that the petitioners since submitting the exhibits had taken out over 700 polling stations from their analysis and were now challenging results from 11, 138 polling stations instead of the original 11,842. These changes in the analysis of the petitioners were submitted to the court and the respondents. Counsel Tsatsu Tsikata, like Counsel for 1st Respondent, Tony Lithur, had pointed to some pink sheets which they challenged for various reasons as not being polling stations where over voting occurred. However, what seems to be obvious is that the counsels have failed to look at the updated analysis of the petitioners and continue displaying pink sheets from polling stations which have been deleted from the analysis or from the various categories which they fell under as at the time of the submission of the exhibits. Aside showing a few dozens of pink sheets out of the around 1,900 polling stations claimed by the petitioners to have had incidents of over-voting to challenge its categorization as polling stations where over voting occurred, the two counsels also pointed to some duplications and mislabeling in the exhibits submitted by the petitioners. They suggested with these duplications that the petitioners deliberately padded the numbers with these duplicates. However, the main witness of the petitioners who has been in the witness stands for the last 11 days insisted to the court that such duplications were not in the analysis and that each polling station was used once and thus those duplications even if real had zero effect on the analysis of the petitioners. Aside these two lines of cross � examination and the justification that the record on the pink sheets was full of errors, the lawyers of all three respondents have failed to really address the main issues being determined by the court and the different forms of irregularities the petitioners have identified on the face of the over 11,000 pink sheets.