General News of Wednesday, 8 May 2013

Source: radioxyzonline

Election Petition: NPP is hiding something - Tony Aidoo

A stalwart of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), Dr. Tony Aidoo, has accused the main opposition New Patriotic Party of “hiding something” in the election petition case.

“They are not coming to court with a petition that is in good faith…they are not fulfilling the maxim of equity, [which demands] that those who come to equity must come with clean hands”, Dr. Aidoo told XYZ News in an interview on Tuesday May, 7, 2013.

“They are hiding something”, he insisted.

Dr. Aidoo, who served as Head of Policy Monitoring and Evaluation at the Presidency in the last administration said: “The 11,000 or so polling stations to which they want to restrict the whole case do not represent the real story of the 24,000 polling stations”.

According to him, the Petitioners “have been very selective, and the selectivity has been targeted at polling stations where President John Mahama won”.

The Petitioners-Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, who is the 2012 Presidential candidate of the NPP; his running mate Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, who is the key witness in the case and the Party’s national Chairman, Mr. Jake Obetsebi Lamptey-are praying the court to annul results in 11, 138 polling stations where they claim widespread irregularities occurred during the December 7 and 8 elections last year.

The Respondents are President John Mahama, the Electoral Commission and the governing NDC.

Lead Counsel for the third Respondents, Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata sprung up a controversial pink sheet in court yesterday with the aim to proving that the purported irregularities clamoured about by the Petitioners did not only happen in the NDC’s stronghold but also in the NPP’s stronghold.

Dr. Tony Aidoo explained that: “…Mr. Tsikata, on the basis of pleadings that they have made in response to the petitioners, says ‘you have not come to court in good faith, and I want to show you evidence that you are acting in bad faith that you have been selective, that you are not telling the court the whole story, that you want the court to decide in your favour on the basis of selective presentation of evidence’”.

“So he wanted to confront Dr. Bawumia with evidence of the Petitioners’ lack of good faith. That is what the whole thing is about”, he emphasised.