Tsatsu is a bad Lawyer - PPP Lawyer

A private Lawyer, Davies Ofosu Appiah, has said the election petition has defrocked Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata of his long-celebrated and acclaimed wizardry and genius in law.

Mr. Ofosu Appiah who represented the Progressive People's Party (PPP), told Radio XYZ’s Saturday Current Affairs Programme, ‘The Analyst’ that: “We have always been made to believe from law school to practice and now that Mr. Tsikata is such a gem as far as the law is concerned… [But] personally I believe that there might be lawyers in the classroom, and there are lawyers in practice”.

“I don’t see him as one of our best lawyers in practice because the things I can use to measure who is a good practitioner [are] nil [with him]; …maybe he is a good Professor…or maybe he was a good student…but as a good practitioner, I beg to differ respectfully, I don’t see it”, Mr.Ofosu Appiah insisted.

He said: “Good Lawyers, as far as practice is concerned, are those” captured in the law books, adding that: “I don’t see Mr. Tsikata’s name [that] much” in the law books.

Mr. Ofosu Appiah said: “In fact, the first time I saw his name [was in regard to] what we refer to as locus classicus, Tufuor v. Attorney General…even that, it was Akufo-Addo who led the team”.

He wondered why Mr. Tsikata has been celebrated so much as a law genius and yet, as far as he was concerned, has shown less than impressive demonstration of that accolade in the ongoing election petition which is being telecast live on TV and Radio.

“What case have you done; what have you added to the practice so much so that your name should be a household [name] in the way that it is being handled”, Mr. Ofosu Appiah enquired of Mr. Tsikata rhetorically.

“It seems to me that it’s Nana Akufo-Addo who has made him”, he said.

He explained that: “In that case, Tufuor v. Attorney General, Nana Akufo-Addo carried him there and let his name appear in the Law books”.

Additionally, he noted that: “When Nana Akufo-Addo was Attorney General, it looks to me that he made Mr. Tsikata so popular by sending him to Court…and out of that his name appeared in the law books as somebody who was being tried…and today it is the same Nana Akufo-Addo who has sent a case to court and out of that he [Tsatsu Tsikata] has had the privilege to appear on our screens and making it seem that what we were made to belief is true”.

Mr. Tsikata is Counsel for the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), third Respondent in the ongoing election petition at the Supreme Court.

He has been cross-examining the key witness and Second Petitioner, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia for the past four days.

Nana Akufo-Addo and his two co-petitioners including his running mate Dr Mahamudu Bawumia and the party’s National Chairman, Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey are challenging the validity of the 2012 presidential poll results.

They claim there were widespread irregularities as well as strategically planned rigging, through the collusion of the first respondent, President John Mahama, and the second respondent, the Electoral Commission.

They, therefore, are praying the Supreme Court to annul results in 11,138 polling stations, where they claim, massive and strategic rigging occurred.

Dr Bawumia has been under cross-examination for the past week after he was led in evidence by his Lead Counsel, Philip Addison.