The Chief Justice Her ladyship Gertrude Torkonoo has defended her decision to exercise an expedite hearing requested by the Attorney General, Mr. Godfred Dame for the case filed by South Dayi member of Parliament, Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor for his petition to the speaker against the ministerial and deputy ministerial vetting.
The Chief Justice had come under a severe backlash from a section of the public following her decision to adjudicate Dafeamekpor’s case ahead of that of Richard Dela Sky, whose date for filing was two weeks prior to Rockson’s.
Members of the opposition described the action taken by the Chief Justice and by extension, the Supreme Court as bias, hence a bad precedence for Ghana’s democracy.
However, addressing members of the Judicial Press Corps on a wide range of issues on Wednesday, April 4, Justice Torkonoo revealed that the content of the letter from the A-G insisting the reasons for the request was cogent enough to warrant her granting the request.
"Immediately a process is filed, you have a maximum of 21 days. Give or take another three days for service, you would have another so the instruction is to wait for a minimum of 25 days. If no process is filed, then same here you notice that the thought was set.
"At that time, we'll know that everybody's been given all the opportunity given by the rules and they didn't follow their processes. So we can either deal with a motion on it. “In this particular case, as soon as the case was filed, the Attorney General filed his response. He filed his affidavit to the opposition. So the case was ripe for hearing.
"We were going to go on Easter break and the Attorney General wrote and said that this is a matter of governance so could the court issue a hearing notice for the case to be heard, and the court was going to sit on Wednesday, so hearing notices were issued so that the applicant who filed the case himself and who should be interested in his case himself will come court and the two other respondents will also come to court," she said.
The Chief Justice said she knew that the applicants, Speaker of Parliament and Attorney-General had all been served.
Speaking on the generalities of the arrangements, she added, "so we dealt with the application on its merit and moved on it."
It is recalled that on March 27, the Supreme Court dismissed an application filed by South Dayi MP, Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor, contesting the approval of the newly appointed ministers and deputy ministers.
In a unanimous decision, a five-member panel of the court deemed the application frivolous and an abuse of the court process.
Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor, the applicant, had aimed to halt the vetting process in Parliament until his lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the President's decision to reassign Ministers without Parliament's involvement was resolved.
However, the Supreme Court concluded that the MP's case lacked direct relevance to the nominees under consideration in Parliament, as it primarily pertained to reassigned Ministers.
Source: Kobina Darlington/peacefmonline.com
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