Nana Ato Dadzie, a member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) legal team in the on-going 2012 presidential election petition, has said it was obvious that lead counsel for the petitioners, Philip Addison, was going to face a tougher time in court in his re-examination of Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia.
According to him, the re-examination is an opportunity to clarify what has been asked but not an opportunity to start afresh a new cross-examination which was attempted by Mr. Addison.
“The re-examination a very small window of opportunity to clarify things. It was quite clear that Mr. Addison was going to have one big hell of a time from the respondents in his re-examination.
“…In practice, as soon as you stand on your feet to re-examine, the other lawyers will start raising objections so that you don’t go beyond that little window opened to redo your case. That was exactly what the respondents were doing in court,” he said.
Adding, “The objections were coming because basically Mr. Addison was asking questions which were not necessary and he was rehashing the whole argument and seeking to ask his client to lead fresh evidence in areas he thought was needed to improve. And that is not allowed,” he said.
Lawyer Philip Addison, lead counsel for the petitioners in court on Wednesday was attacked with numerous objections from the first, second and third respondents of the election case which he failed to have a smooth re-examination of the star witness, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia.
Speaking to GTV after Wednesday’s court proceedings, Mr. Dadzie noted that all attempts by Mr. Addison to raise issues to improve their evidence afore was rightfully objected by to Mr. Lithur and Tsikata.
However, Nana Ato Dadzie admitted that it was really a tough time for them to have battled the NPP in their re-examination, but Mr. Addison’s introduction of the re-categorized list was the main problem for the NPP to have all their questions overruled since that list had no exhibit numbers.
He sees Mr. Addison’s responses in court to challenge the nine panel judges as unfortunate behavior since he was frustrated by then.
Source: GhanaWeb
