General News of Wednesday, 22 May 2013

Source: radioxyzonline

End of Tsatsu’s cross-examination “great relief” – Gloria Akuffo

The Legal team of the Petitioners in the election results challenge case says the end of Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata’s cross-examination of key witness Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, marks the “beginning of the end” of the matter.

The Spokesperson for the Petitioners' legal team, Ms. Gloria Akuffo, told journalists after Tuesday's hearing that, "it's a great relief", adding that: "it marks the beginning of the end".

Mr. Tsikata, Lead Counsel for the governing National Democratic Congress ended his cross-examination after 13 days at it.

During the period, Mr. Tsikata took a lot of flak from the Lawyers on the Petitioners’ side who accused him of attempting to unnecessarily delay the process.

There were also times when the Bench of the Court expressed similar sentiments.

Mr. Tsikata, however, noted that the end of his cross examination was subject to the auditing of the pink sheets tendered in evidence by the Petitioners.

International Accounting and Auditing firm KPMG is the referee agreed by all the parties, to do a head count of all the pink sheets to ascertain the number tendered in evidence.

The counting was ordered by the Bench at the instance of Mr. Tsikata.

The case has been adjourned to Wednesday May 22, 2013 for the Petitioners to start their re-examination.

At Tuesday’s sitting however, a brief power outage forced the Court to suspend proceedings for a few minutes.