The petitioner in the Supreme Court case concerning the voting rights of Deputy Speakers, Mr Justice Abdulai, has said he does not need legal advi
The petitioner in the Supreme Court case concerning the voting rights of Deputy Speakers, Mr Justice Abdulai, has said he does not need legal advice from former President John Dramani Mahama.
According to Mr Abdulai, the former President has no capacity to advise him on the law.
In his view, he should rather be advising Mr Mahama who is not a lawyer on the law.
Mr Mahama had earlier described the 7-0 unanimous decision of the apex court that presiding deputy speakers had the right to vote as “regrettable” and “I look forward to the applicant applying for a review of this ruling”.
Reacting to Mr Mahama’s comment, Mr Abdulai told Kwame Obeng Sarkodie on Accra100.5FM’s morning show Ghana Yensom on Thursday, 17 March 2022: “The former president cannot advise me on the law because he is not a lawyer”.
“I respect him as a former president but he cannot advise me on matters of the law,” Mr Abdulai insisted.
Mr Abdulai petitioned the court to declare as unconstitutional, First Deputy Speaker Joseph Osei-Owusu’s action of counting himself as one of the MPs on the floor while presiding over the proceedings of the House in relation to the formation of a quorum for the passage of the 2022 budget, which had earlier been rejected by the minority side.
He was of the view that once a Deputy Speaker, who is an MP, presides in the stead of the Speaker, he loses his right to vote.
In a unanimous decision on Wednesday, 9 March 2022, however, the seven-member Bench, presided over by Justice Jones Dotse, held that upon a true and proper interpretation of Article 103 and 104 of the 1992 Constitution, a Deputy Speaker, who is a Member of Parliament, does not lose his right to take part in decision-making in parliament.
Speaking to the media on the ruling on Saturday, 12 March 2022, Mr Abdulai, who is also a lawyer, said: “This issue about the Deputy Speaker and the substantive Speaker being one and the same is something that I thought the Supreme Court should have made a firm pronouncement on.”
“The Constitution says that whoever occupies a position – whether acting or deputy – has the same powers and authorities as the substantive one. The Standing Orders reaffirm this same position that the Deputy Speaker is the same or occupies the same position or function as the Speaker”, he argued.
“Because of this difficulty, I expected a firm pronouncement on those matters by the Supreme Court to put a finality to that part of it. A firm pronouncement would have put some level of clarity and finality to the disagreements that are presently ongoing”, he noted.
He said: “In their own judgment, [Justices] felt, ‘probably it wasn’t borne out of the reliefs that I was seeking’, so, they refused to grant it. That’s fair and part of the legal processes.”
The law lecturer also told host Nana Otu Darko, the host of CTV’s Dwabre Mu morning show on Thursday that he has been inundated with calls ever since the apex court ruled on the matter.
“I’m receiving calls from both prominent people in the NPP and NDC … I’ve also received calls from both past and present students of mine”.
Also, he said a lot of TV stations have “called me specifically to fund-raising purposes to support the review”.
Mr Abdulai said he finds it “very humbling” that a lot of Ghanaians are ready to offer some help toward the judicial process but has decided against accepting any monetary offers.
Also, he revealed that he has been in touch with some statesmen who, collectively, are trying to use the judicial process as a rallying point to bring together former Presidents John Agyekum Kufuor and John Mahama together with President Nana Akufo-Addo as well as past and present Speakers of Parliament, to deliberate on the matter and push for national unity, since, in his view, his aim of unifying the country through the court petition is rather turning out to be counter-production because the 7-0 ruling of the Supreme Court appears to have deepened the cracks of division in the nation.
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