By A. A. Yayra
The uncontrolled twisting and slanting of proceedings at the on-going election petition hearing at the Supreme Court in the media has incurred the wrath of the highest court of the land, thereby forcing the Justices to sound a last warning bell.
With the NPP and its media collaborators? ?professional? spinning of happenings in court reaching a crescendo, the Presiding Judge, William Atuguba did not mince words when he issued a stern and uncompromising warning to one of the petitioner?s most trusted tabloids, Daily Guide of dire consequences if they continue to peddle the unbridled falsehoods.
Heavily peeved with the unfounded publication, Justice Atuguba yesterday, emphatically mentioned Daily Guide? as being a protagonist and a conveyer belt of the untruth being fanned and oiled by the NPP for cheap propaganda purpose, the diabolic behavior he said,? if not checked or punished can set the country up in flames.
Taking serious exception to the Daily Guide publication which among other things suggested that the presiding judge wrote a letter to KPMG telling them that there was still one box of pink sheet with the registrar that should also be counted but eluded the accounting firm, Justice Atuguba admonished that ?any person be it in the media or not who crosses the final touchline of proper coverage reportage will be met with the appropriate response.?
He said such false publications have the propensity of derailing the gains that the Judiciary has made, adding that it can trigger responses from other parties in the ongoing case that could throw the nation into sheer anarchy, stressing that henceforth, the court will not stomach such publications intended for despicable political agenda.
Short of names, the court also scolded the petitioners for leaking the KPMG reports to their tabloids, specifically Daily Guide before it was officially admitted in evidence in the Supreme Court.
It would be recalled that a day before KPMG submitted its draft report on the auditing of Justice Atuguba?s pink sheets, Daily Guide in a story headlined ?Atuguba?s Missing Pink Sheets Found? posited that ?a box containing exhibits of pink sheets submitted by the petitioners belonging to Justice William Atuguba, which was initially thought to have eluded the independent accounting firm KPMG, has been found?
According to the publication, in the course of the counting of the ?control mechanism?, the presiding judge sent a message to the KPMG officials that ?they should pick a box of pink sheet from the court Registrar which they had overlooked.?
The story in parts reads that ?Daily Guide sources said Justice Atuguba had written to KPMG telling them that there was still one box with the registrar and that they should take and count its contents in addition to the 9,800 already counted.
However, when The Al-Hajj followed up on the issue at the instance of the Daily Guide publication which became an anthem for all the spin doctors of the NPP, it turned out that the publication was one of the strategies adopted by the petitioners to confuse the public before the report is made public, especially when the audit has revealed some discrepancies in the petitioner?s claim that they filed 11 842 pink sheets at the court.
Source: The Al-Hajj
