I never slept well during election petition hearing; Bawumia reveals

It was an historic act and a landmark case challenging the outcome of a Presidential election and he was at the centre of it all. One year after a verdict that drew tears from many, star witness in the Presidential Election Petition Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has revealed, he had sleepless nights throughout the eight long months of the case.

The New Patriotic Party's 2012 presidential candidate Nana Akufo-Addo; his running mate Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia and then party chairman, Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, has prayed the Court to annul the election results which they claimed was fraught with irregularities.

The entire nation came to a standstill on August 29, 2013 earnestly expecting to hear the decision of the nine-member panel of judges who heard the case, led by Justice William Atuguba.

The judges ruled by 5:4 to uphold the Electoral Commission's declaration of president John Mahama as winner of the December 7, election on the ticket of the governing National Democratic Congress.

Dr. Bawumia whose phrase “you and I were not there” became one of the many expressions that emerged from the election petition hearing told Joy News’ Manasseh Azure Awuni in an exclusive interview that he could not manage a good night sleep before the verdict was delivered.

“No. I didn’t have a sound sleep. In fact throughout the case, I don’t think I ever slept soundly because I was leading the case [and] I was the principal witness at the team working and all of that.

“The night before the verdict was a night full of rumour, you had so many people calling [to say] it’s 6:3...then someone would call you and say oh it’s 5:4, 7:2, with all sorts of permutation.

“Some were going in our favour, some were not in our favour…Everybody had their own sense of what was going to happen. All I knew was that there was uncertainty,” he told Manasseh.

However, the New Patriotic Party’s vice presidential candidate in the 2012 election said even though the NPP lost the case eventually, he has a positive outlook about it.

“I have mixed feelings about it but I am very positive in my outlook about its impact on the development of our democracy and our legal system”.

Source: myjoyonline.com