The former party secretary general further stated that the process servers had gone to the offices of counsels for the defendants on Friday 6 January 2017 but that none of them was in to receive the supplemental affidavits as earlier ordered by presiding judge.
Lawyer Tejan-Sie argued that they did their best to make sure that the defense counsels were served the supplemental affidavits days before the hearing of the matter but that none of them could be found in their offices. But lead counsel for the defendants, Umaru Napoleon Koroma, responded very strongly by saying that the lawyer Tejan-Sie was not “telling the truth”, stating that they had never received any supplemental affidavits from their process servers and that they only got them at around 9:15 am, few munites to the commencement of the matter before Justice Edwards.
Because counsel for the plaintiffs could not ensure delivery of the documents to counsels for the defendants within the stipulated legal timeframe, the entire proceeding was put on hold. The argument was that the defense would require ample time to thoroughly peruse and properly digest the said documents before the court could allow counsels for both parties to commence arguments.
Justice Edwards therefore ordered that counsel representing defendants file in the affidavits in opposition, so as to ensure that all documents pertaining to the matter would be properly arranged before the court as required by law and to ensure that the matter was expedited.
It would be recalled that the first plaintiffs, Alusine Bangura, Alex Kargbo and Victor Sheriff took the SLPP to the High Court on allegations that “some national officers of the party circumvented the rules and regulations approved by the Political Parties’ Registration Commission for the conduct of the party’s lower level and executive elections”.
They also accused the current national executive of “using parallel executive list to conduct lower level elections”, claiming further that the process used to hold the party’s lower elections totally contravened the orders of the Supreme Court in the previous SLPP court matter.
The matter comes up again on Wednesday 11 January 2017.
