Tsatsu Tsikata has rebuffed suggestions that three of the nine-member Bench that heard the election petition case, were consistently in favour of the respondents.
The suggestion was put to Mr. Tsikata by TV3’s Hot Issues Host, Kwesi Pratt Jr., who had earlier, during the same interview on Saturday, asked the governing National Democratic Congress’ Lead Counsel in the petition hearing, if he was surprised three other judges on the same panel, consistently opposed the respondents.
Whereas Mr. Tsikata concurred that there was a set of judges on the panel who opposed the respondents consistently, he parried off the obverse.
As far as he is concerned, unlike the set of three Justices who, according to his observations, consistently opposed the respondents, none of the others on the panel consistently favoured the cause of the respondents.
“…That is actually not the case because there were many things that we put forward which at various points were rejected,” he asserted.
Citing an example, Mr. Tsikata said: “The first time when Tony Lithur, Counsel for the President, requested that there should be a count of the pink sheets, the first time it was rejected because the Judges at that time thought that perhaps there wasn’t a sufficient basis established…we thought from that early stage it could have saved us a lot of trouble…and there were other quite important situations in which they actually did decide against us”.
“…So I don’t think you can say that any of the Judges – three or four or five or whatever – had any consistent in favour of the respondents…and the records are there…the transcripts are there for indicating clearly that there wasn’t any consistent line that some Judges would always support and so on. I don’t think you can say that”.
