Private Legal Practitioner and member of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) , Nii Kpakpo Samoa Addo has dumped the fortunes of his party in the ongoing 2020 Election petition before the apex court of the land.
In a response to a question from the host of Citi Tv’s #TheBigIssue, on his thoughts about his party’s closing address to the Supreme Court, Nii Kpakpo remarked “ Once the Electoral Commissioner, Jean Mensah did not mount the box, the election petition should have been withdrawn. In this scenario, the NDC’s legal team took a gamble “
Nii Kpakpo argued that the key thing was to get your opponents into the witness box and elicit evidence. Once the NDC failed in getting Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Madam Jean Mensah to mount the witness box , the case should’ve been withdrawn.
“In this scenario, the NDC legal team took a gamble. They failed to get the Electoral Commissioner or any of the officials of the commission for that matter to be subpoenaed before they closed their case because they allegedly relied on some reliance that had been indicated through the motion for admission of facts. They had allegedly been told she would be available for cross examination but that didn’t work. I find it odd that you’d still hit your head against the wall expecting to get different results because basically that’s what you’re doing”
According to the Legal practitioner, the NDC didn’t independently produce any figures to the court but solely relied on the evidence they intended to get from Madam Jean Mensah by way of cross examination. “ NDC consistently argued that the returning officer , Jean Mensah is the one who declared the results, thus she alone can answer questions in respect to the said admission of errors. However , he opined that the NDC had a good legal strategy but miscalculated in its implementation. He attributed this miscalculation to the belief the NDC held that Jean Mensah would be available for cross examination. Nii Kpakpo again quizzed why the NDC did not list Jean Mensah and the EC’s regional directors as witnesses.
Winding up his submissions on the talk show, he clearly stated that the ongoing election petition is a dead case to him because the Supreme Court dismissed John Mahama’s application to reopen his case. “Honestly I don’t see how it can be revived by writing a hundred or two hundred page address because at the heart of the game is evidence”