Ag prez saga: Adjaho hasn’t committed treason – Sam Okudzeto

A former President of the Ghana Bar Association, Sam Okudzeto has disagreed with legal arguments that the Speaker of Parliament could be held for treason for serving as acting president this week without taking the presidential oath of office.

Some Lawyers, including Kwame Akuffo, have argued that the Speaker committed treason by acting as president without subscribing to a fresh oath. He believes Edward Doe Adjaho can be impeached over that.

Okudzeto, however, disagrees. “…I think the way we are going about it and people making allegations of treason, I don’t think it’s the right approach because if the president has come or the vice president has come and the speaker refuses to hand over to them, then you can say he’s committed treason, otherwise I don’t see how treason applies here,” he said in an interview with STARR NEWS Friday.

Adjaho has argued that his September 19, 2013 subscription to the same oath administered by Chief Justice Georgina Wood, when both the President and the Vice President were out of the country, still held sway, thus unnecessary for him to be sworn in afresh.

That interpretation was reportedly reached after consultations among the Chief Justice, the Speaker, AG, and the two leaders of Parliament.

President John Mahama travelled to Burkina Faso Wednesday while his vice Kwesi Amissah-Arthur was also in India on an official visit. He returned home shortly and then took off to Nigeria Friday.

Mahama is also billed to travel to the Vatican Sunday. All these travels come on the heels of an earlier two-week sojourn to the UK and Denmark.

According Article 60 (11) of Ghana’s 1992 Constitution: “Where the President and the Vice-President are both unable to perform the functions of the President, the Speaker of Parliament shall perform those functions until the President or the Vice-President is able to perform those functions or a new President assumes office, as the case may be.”

Also Article 60(12) of the Constitution states that: “The Speaker shall, before commencing to perform the functions of the President under clause (11) of this article, take and subscribe the oath set out in relation to the office of the President.”

Okudzeto, however, said he believes in the school of thought that says once the Speaker has been sworn in as acting president at any point in time, he need not be sworn in again at a different time since the first swearing in gave him the “power of attorney” to act as president anytime that both the President and his Deputy are not around.