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The legal team of John Mahama says the Supreme Court’s denial of the former president’s application to reopen his case “smack of a predetermined agenda to rule against the petitioner in this matter.”
The court on Tuesday, February 16, 2021, dismissed Mahama’s request through his lawyers to reopen his case.
The Court in its ruling said it found the intimation by Tsatsu Tsikata, the lead counsel for the former president that he intended to call the chairperson of the EC as a hostile witness “baffling.”
It continued that a witness who had not yet entered the witness box to testify could not be called a hostile witness under any circumstance.
The court said it exercises its inherent jurisdiction inter-alia to correct errors in procedure and to ensure that no miscarriage of justice was occasioned during a trial.
However, the petitioner had not demonstrated “to us in any way that the decision of the respondent not to testify which was upheld by this court in its ruling of 11 February 2021 has occasioned in any miscarriage of justice.”
Reacting to the ruling in a post-trial interview, a spokesperson for the lawyers of Mahama, Dr. Dominic Ayine, slammed the court for doing Ghanaians a great disservice in denying the reopening of the case.
He further accused the bench of reducing the petition to a single issue petition when the petitioner laid before the court 5 key issues.
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“To reduce the petition into a single issue petition is rather unfortunate and smack of a predetermined agenda to rule against the petitioner in this matter,” Ayine said
Source: Ghanaarticles.com/YEN.com.gh
