WE-THE-PEOPLE MUST WATCH EVERY STEP PARLIAMENT TAKES UNTIL ITS DISSOLUTION
THE ELECTORATE HAVE SPOKEN AND WE-THE-PEOPLE MUST WATCH EVERY STEP PARLIAMENT TAKES UNTIL ITS DISSOLUTION.
BY MARTIN A. B. K. AMIDU
We are as an electorate still saddled with the eighth (8th) Parliament until 7 January 2025 when the 9th Parliament actualizes our free will of who should make laws to govern us despite the overwhelming indication of our disappointment in most of those Members of Parliament now representing us from our various constituencies. In this interregnum, every patriotic Ghanaian ought to be very alert and watchful of what the 8th Parliament which has been summoned by the Speaker for business on 16 December 2024 intends to accomplish within the remaining few days We-the-People are anxiously waiting with bated breath to see them disappear from our governance scene forever.
The 8th Parliament rendered itself an eye sore during most of its existence, particularly when it was reconvened in October 2024 to complete its session before winding up its business by allocating funds for the transition to the sixth President and the 9th Parliament. Parliament can within the period at its disposal still legislate and take other binding decisions. There is, however, precedent which shows that critical legislation which may fundamentally affect the lives and welfare of the citizen are to be held in abeyance for the 9th Parliament to decide with its new mandate and trust from the electorate whether they are in the national interest for enactment into law.
The massive electoral victory accorded the President-elect at the polls along side a sizeable majority of Members of Parliament is a clear demonstration of the withdrawal of the trust and confidence the electorate had in the ability of the President Nana Akufo-Addo/Mahamudu Bawumia government to make selfless decisions on their behalf. The Nana Akufo-Addo government can within the few days remaining for the assumption of office of the President-elect take such vengeful actions and measures calculated to frustrate the will of the People by putting obstacles in the path of the in-coming government. After all, the incumbent lame duck President Akufo-Addo was paranoid about the likelihood of John Dramani Mahama being elected as President to audit the economic mess and looting of the public purse the government was leaving behind only for the electorate to give his nemesis a landslide victory at the polls. There is no guarantee that the lame duck President will not copy from the playbook of his USA counterpart, Joe Biden who is putting obstacles and temptations in the of the path President-election Donald Trump in the United States of America.
Parliamentary corruption is endemic worldwide and Ghana’s propensity to excel has been demonstrated by several transactional self-serving and selfish compromises of the 8th Parliament including the 2021 Budget Statement debacle and the draconian E-Levy which arose from it. With a vote of no confidence in both the President Nana Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government and the Speaker Bagbin led Parliament, We-the-People who have proven our capability to take our destiny into our own hands must remain ever vigilant against further abuses during the balance of the tenure of the President and the 8th Parliament.
As Parliament convenes tomorrow 16 December 2024 the four Members of Parliament whose decision to contest to return to the 9th Parliament as independent Members of Parliament resulted in actions in the Supreme Court are entitled to take their seats in the 8th Parliament by virtue of the subsisting void interim orders and final decisions of the Supreme Court. I have contended already that the Chief Justice descended into the partisan political affray in the execution of her administrative functions as head of the judicial service in the administrative steps she took to facilitate the fast tracking, the hearing, decisions, and orders of the interim application of the Majority Leader of Parliament. The substantive judgment was shamefully rendered per incuriam in violation of the Supreme Court rules, 1996 (C.I. 16) as I have submitted in a previous article.
The unconstitutional decisions and orders issued by the Supreme Court on the status of the four Members of Parliament remains binding on the Speaker of Parliament until overturned by the Court on its own or upon an application to set them aside. The Speaker has not applied for a review of the decision of the Supreme Court in his application to set aside the original order suspending his ruling dated 17 October 2024. I am also not aware that an application to review the per incuriam judgment delivered on 12 November 2024 has been filed. In these circumstances, the unlawful decisions and orders remain binding. I do not share the view that because no orders were made in the per incuriam declarations made by the majority of the Supreme Court in its judgment of 12 November 2024 the Speaker may disregard the declarations therein made. I do not subscribe to the use of ingenious technical arguments to defeat the rule of law because it will continue to replicate itself and lead to endangering the 1992 Constitution.
I will rather recommend to the Speaker of Parliament the perseverance exhibited by Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata when he was convicted and sentenced on 18 June 2008 culminating in his acquittal and discharge eight years down the line by the Court of Appeal on 30 November 2016. I heard Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata commenting in the media on the recent void decisions of the Supreme Court and I wondered whether his listeners knew the price the three justices of the Court of Appeal paid for their courage in defying the establishment and making the decision acquitting and discharging him of the crimes with which he was charged and prosecuted by Nana Akufo-Addo when he was the Attorney-General between 2001 and 2003.
The Nana Akufo-Addo took office as President of Ghana on 7 January 2017. The late Mr. Justice Stephen E. Kanyoke, who presided and Mr. Justice Francis Kusi-Appiah were both elevated to the Court of Appeal on 16 September 2003 by John Agyekum Kufuor whilst Mr. Justice Danis Dominic Adjei who delivered the unanimous judgment of the Court that acquitted Mr. Tsikata was appointed to the Court of Appeal by Professor John Evans Atta Mills on 7 July 2010. By November 2016 Mr. Justices Kanyoke and Kusi-Appiah saw their far juniors on the Court of Appeal bench fast tracked and elevated to the Supreme Court over them. After 7 January 2017 none of the three justices saw any elevation to the Supreme Court even though their juniors continued to be elevated. Mr. Justice Kanyoke retired and died shortly thereafter within this regime. Mr. Justice Danis Dominic Adjei who delivered the judgment of the Court of Appeal is the only one of the three justices still on the Court of Appeal and is currently serving as a Judge of the Africa Court in Arusha, Tanzania, since 29 August 2022.
Will Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata have been lucky to have been acquitted if the Court of Appeal did not render its decision on 30 November 2016 but waited until after 7 January 2017? The academics may struggle with those conjectures as the American jurists like doing. The NDC government at the time was not expected to appeal the Court of Appeal decision and it would have smacked of witch hunting for the new government in 2017 headed by the Attorney-General who commenced the prosecution in the first place to have done so. The wrongful conviction remains overturned by Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata’s perseverance.
But I can bet my last penny that Mr. Justice Danis Adjei has been more than qualified for elevation to the Supreme Court and the only reasonable explanation for his marking time at the Court of Appeal all these years may lie in the decision of the Court of Appeal on 30 November 2016. Hopefully, he will now find his way to the Supreme Court. His other two older senior colleagues paid the price of being deviants to the government tradition that appointed them to the Court of Appeal.
National Constitutions, municipal laws, and conventions are human endeavours or social constructions and not divinely ordained precepts with divine solutions to human problems. I remember being flabbergasted when I was told in my first year General Legal System course that what a judge eats for breakfast may affect the decision he makes in court. The effluxion of time and experience has taught me that only consistent and patriotic action of citizens of integrity and honour can sustain real democracy and not self-presentation as public office holders, professionals or champions of law and liberty. Ghana can write, re-write, and amend thousand Constitutions; nothing will change unless the electorate enlightens itself sufficiently to ensure that the political elite and the deep state which includes members of the three arms of government take their constitutional oaths seriously and exhibit a high degree of integrity and selflessness in public office.
The problem is not with the 1992 Constitution. The problem is with lack of honour and integrity to uphold the letter and spirit of the Constitution without skewed interpretation rooted in politics and not the ethics of law and public administration. The 7 December 2024 election has disclosed a new Ghanaian electorate with a new consciousness of its place within our democratic dispensation. Ghanaian patriots should, therefore, be the vanguard to maintain that momentum in watching every step the 8th Parliament which reconvenes tomorrow takes from now until it is dissolved on 6 January 2025 to ensure that no anti-people decisions are taken before the assumption of office of the President elect. Political self-interest must give way to Ghana First.
Martin A. B. K. Amidu
15 December 2024.