The Supreme Court hearing the presidential election petition Monday refused an application by the petitioners for a soft-copy of the report on the pink sheets audit by, auditing firm, KPMG. The court made the decision after it heard the testimony of a representative of the firm, Mr. Nii Amanor Dodoo, who said from a “risk-management perspective”, it, as a matter of policy, does not give soft copies of its audit reports to parties. He was called into the witness box after persistent counter-arguments between counsel for the petitioners, Phillip Addison and those of the respondents Tsatsu Tsikata (counsel for 3rd respondent) and Tony Lithur (counsel for 1st respondent - John Mahama). The petitioners applied for the soft copy after requesting for time to study the report submitted by KPMG. Mr. Addison who made the oral application for the soft copy said it was to facilitate their study of the report. But the respondents' lawyers took turns to vehemently oppose the request. Mr. Lithur said the agreement reached by the parties and KPMG was that the referee would keep a soft copy “under lock and key” and provide hard copies to the parties. This, he said, was to guard against any possible reproduction and tinkering with the report. One of the judges questioned whether a reproduced copy would affect the referee’s copy. “Can’t it still be kept under lock and key?”, she quizzed. Lithur said the court would be intruding into the decision agreed by the parties. Tsatsu Tsikata added that without any intent to “cast undue aspersions”, there was “very good reason” for the referee to keep only one soft copy. This agreement ought to be taken “seriously”, he said. “Let’s call a spade, a spade”, even hard copies of exhibits have been transmogrified, he claimed. He pleaded the court not to “set aside that agreement without proper application, justifiable grounds and consent of the referee”. To do so would “compromise the integrity” of the referee, he argued. Philip Addison said the respondents' objection “sounds very strange”. He denied there was any agreement as claimed by the respondents. He said he only understood that soft copies of daily print-outs will not be given when the process began but not after the work has been finished. Nii Amanor Dodoo, witness for KPMG said although there was no definite agreement, from a “risk-management perspective” they do not give out soft copies of reports. He said they do not want aspects of the report to be “taken out of context”. They also have some disclaimers in the report to this effect, Doodo noted. The court said in view of the Mr. Dodoo's testimony, the request was refused. It, however, granted the application for adjournment to allow the petitioners to study the report and see whether their comments were taken into account by the referee when compiling the final report. Presiding judge Atuguba announced that the court would resume on Wednesday, 26th June 2013. Mr. Addison had asked that the petitioners be given clear days and that they would likle to come back to court on Thursday, June 27, 2013. He noted that although they were served with four volumes in the draft report, five have actually been filed. He said they wanted to be sure that some Substantial issues raised about the draft report were incorporated in the final report, he said. He said their client would be the last person to delay the court as suggested by the respondents. But Tony Lithur,counsel for the first respondent disagreed. He said two days was “one day too much” – an extra day was fine. He added that the reason for adjournment was because a certain number of exhibits became questionable during Addison’s cross-examination of Dr. Afari-Gyan. Now that the count had been completed, there was no need to delay cross-examination just to study the report for two days, he concluded.