Drawing deep from his “rural bank” experience, witness-in-the-box, Asiedu Nketia has said pink sheets should be likened to “deposits slips”, but not “cheques” as his opposing witness has described.
Dr. Bawumia, witness for the petitioners under cross-examination claimed that serial numbers on the pink sheets are “like numbers on cheques”.
He alleged that with the rampant duplication of these numbers on pink sheet, “massive irregularities” was perpetrated.
This affected the results of the 2012 presidential elections in favour of President John Mahama, the petitioners claimed.
But continuing with his evidence-in-chief, the General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Asiedu Nketia, aka “General Mosquito” disagreed with this claim.
“I have never worked in the Bank of Ghana, but I have worked in a rural bank,” he opened his argument.
“Pink sheets cannot be likened in any way to cheques, but …rather deposit slips,” he claimed.
The witness said deposit slips can be used anywhere in a bank’s branch. It has columns for account name and account number which once they have been filled ties the slip to a specific account.
Similarly, he said, a pink sheet can be used at any polling station.
It is only after you have entered a code number and a polling station name on a pink sheet that the results would describe events at the polling station, he noted.
He continued that the “printing of pink sheets are not tracked like the way cheque books are tracked”.
But ballot papers -bearing serial numbers – are tracked to “the last user”. He said a damaged ballot paper is “preserved” by a special procedure, but a soiled pink sheet was not.
His analogy was not finished.
He observed that a customer cannot use somebody’s cheque book because in cheque books there are serial numbers. The number tells about the branch, the location, town and information about the customer.
These serial numbers are stored in a database, in effect one cannot use another person’s cheque book, he emphasized.
But according to “General Mosquito” pink sheets do not have this privileged status.
“The printing, utilisation and distribution are treated like any other stationary” and this was his experience according to “rural banks”.
