Tsatsu Bashed Over Court Tactics

As the Supreme Court resumes hearing of the election petition today, attention has been turned on Tsatsu Tsikata, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) star lawyer. Tsatsu has received tongue lashing over his handling of the case, especially his cross-examination of the second petitioner, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, where he is said to be employing delay tactics to stretch the case. The NDC lawyer�s handling of the case has apparently not gone down well with even the ruling party�s supporters, with three members of the NDC�s legal team pleading with disappointed supporters to be patient with the style of Tsatsu. While Lawyer Kojogah Adawudu spoke on Asempa Fm on Friday to appease the impatient supporters, Nana Ato Dadzie and Abraham Amaliba, also members of the NDC legal team expressed the same sentiments on Radio XYZ. Apart from NDC supporters who have not seen the promised fireworks from their legal whiz kid, other legal practitioners are equally disappointed in Tsatsu. Many of such Ghanaians swarmed the various social media platforms and Ghanaian news websites expressing their disappointment in the ongoing cross-examination by Tsatsu, with some noting that his cross-examination style is an apparent attempt at unnecessarily delaying the case. Justices of the Supreme Court hearing the case have had cause to complain about Tsatsu�s laborious cross-examination antics, asking him to speed up. A private legal practitioner, Davies Ofosu Appiah, said the election petition hearing had defrocked Tsatsu Tsikata of his long-celebrated and acclaimed wizardry of law. No Show Mr. Ofosu Appiah, a member of the Progressive People�s Party (PPP), made the remark on a Radio XYZ�s Saturday Current Affairs Programme, �The Analyst� at the weekend. According to him, �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 had been celebrated so much as a law genius and yet, as far as he was concerned, had 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 asked 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 has had the privilege to appear on our screens and is making it seem that what we were made to believe is true.� Mr. Tsikata is counsel for the NDC, third Respondents in the ongoing election petition at the Supreme Court, and has been cross-examining Dr. Bawumia for four days. Nana Akufo-Addo and the two other petitioners namely his running mate Dr Bawumia, and the party�s National Chairman, Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, are challenging the validity of the 2012 presidential 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 are therefore praying the Supreme Court to annul results in 11,138 polling stations where they claim malpractices occurred.