Election 2020 petition: We don’t need a lot of grammar to argue our case, says Oppong Nkrumah

Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, a spokesman for President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in the 2020 presidential election petition trial, has declared that lawyers for the second respondent do not need to be verbose to make their case.

Answering a question from journalists during a post-trial interview on Wednesday, Oppong Nkrumah said the legal team is interested in speaking to the issues and not engaging in the habit of engaging in irrelevant argument with the bench, in the way of the lawyers for the petitioner.

“Counsel on our side, you notice, are limiting themselves to the law and the legal requirements, and are not necessarily arguing with the bench and are speaking to the law.

“So, what does the law say? That is what we are interested in arguing. So if, under CI 127 under Rule 44, there is a clear provision that forms are set out and must be made available to all parties, all we need to do is to invoke that. We don’t need a lot of grammar to make our case,” Nkrumah declared.

Straight to the point

He added: “Yes, as a matter of fact, you notice that counsel for the petitioner sometimes has about an hour. In fact, today you noticed that, for about an hour, he was on his feet making arguments. And counsel for the first and second respondents are very crisp in their responses.”

Nkrumah said he is happy with proceedings because lawyers for the president are on track in arguing their cases in a concise manner.

“It is because this is a court of law and not a court of public opinion.

“When you make an application before the court, you must satisfy what the law requires and back it with authorities that are relevant or the legal invocations that are relevant,” Oppong Nkrumah said.

Another dismissal 

The Supreme Court has dismissed yet another application by John Mahama (the petitioner) in the Election 2020 petition.

Mahama and his legal team were praying the court to grant him an opportunity to inspect the originals of Election 2020 documents to satisfy themselves with the actual results of the election.

According to the motion filed by the petitioner on 2 February 2021, should their application be granted, their perusal of the original documents will afford them better particulars to cross-examine the witness for the first respondent (Jean Mensa, the chair of the Electoral Commission).