Dominic Ayine fails to show up in court after contempt comment

One of the spokespersons of the Petitioner in the ongoing election petition, Dr Dominic Ayine, failed to show up in court for today’s sitting after he accused the Supreme Court of having a “predetermined agenda” following the dismissal of the petitioner’s motion to reopen his case on Tuesday.

Mr. Ayine was quoted to have said, “I am surprised that the Supreme Court of Ghana itself, having set down 5 key issues to be determined is now reducing the issues to 1, which is, the extent to which the evidence we have laid shows that no one got more than 50%+1 of the votes. we made it abundantly clear in the petition that there were several infractions, we are contesting even the constitutionality of the declaration that was made. We are saying that Jean Mensa violated Article 23 of the constitution because she is an administrative body. We have also said her exercise of discretion was contrary to Article 296 of the constitution”.

“These are all germane issues under the constitution and laws of Ghana and to reduce the petition into a single issue petition is rather unfortunate and smacks of a predetermined agenda to rule against the petitioner in this matter,"he added

Moments after Dominic Ayine’s submission, one of the spokespersons of the second respondent, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, said it was scandalous for Dominic Ayine to claim that the Supreme Court justices had a predetermined agenda to rule against the petitioner.

As if that was not enough, a social media campaign was launched to get Dominic Ayine cited for contempt.

According to some social media users, the statement by Mr Ayine was contemptuous and thus he must explain to the bench why he should not be punished.

“For your information, the supreme court is a court of law and not the court of public opinion to be making wild allegations against the judges. Dr Ayine is a disgrace #AyineForContempt,” @Melo_mylo wrote in a tweet.

Another Twitter user, @MaameThis adding her voice to the campaign also wrote “The Supreme Court has to hold Dominic Ayine to a higher standard. He served as Attorney General before and must definitely set a better example. Patapaa no ad?? so. He has to answer for the misguided utterances today. #AyineForContempt.”

Dominic Ayine who is known to address the media usually after the court sitting interestingly did not show up in court today after his alleged contempt comments.

Close sources suggested that he might have been cited for contempt by the apex court and will be served.

But Sammy Gyamfi refuted these claims adding that Dominic Ayine failed to show up because he lost a friend.

He said the party has not been given a document that suggests Dominic Ayine has been cited for contempt.