Gov't in Dilemma over vetting of new SC appointee

As the government ponders its options in the 5-4 Supreme Court (SC) decision declaring the Fast Track Court (FTC) unconstitutional other sets of circumstances seem have to be reckoned with. Since the Attorney General made public his intention of appealing to the Supreme Court to review its decision, much public and media speculation has taken place. One of the options available to the government according to some pundits is to be found in Section 113(2) of the constitution. This section of the constitution stipulates that to review a case, the panel must be made up of more justices than those who sat on the original case. When necessary, the entire court must sit on a review.

The panel that handed down the 5-4 verdict was made up of nine judges. The full strength of the present SC is ten. The tenth member, Justice Lamptey was out of the country and could not be empanelled with his colleagues. Now, he and at least one more judge would be required to make up the full court, because of the odd number required for voting.

The government has made its preferred option known with the nomination of Justice Afreh from the Court of Appeal to be approved by parliament. But that is not the end of the government's problems; there is still the major hurdle of parliament to jump. Parliament has its own rules and procedures, which are not easy to circumvent. The process of approval in normal times could take anything from 7 days (fast track!) to one month or more. Where positions are entrenched, one side of the House could employ filibuster, which could hold up the approval for any number of days, weeks or months.

The current parliament rises on Friday, only two days away. Could the vetting and approval of a Supreme Court judge be fast-tracked when parliament has only two days left before rising for the Easter recess?

Due to the fairly even numbers of the majority and minority and also the intense partisanship in the House, conventional wisdom would dictate that any attempt by the executive to push through the approval of a Supreme Court judge at the present time would meet with stiff opposition from the minority.

However, due to the intense public interest in the case, parliament may yet exert its resources to dispose of this one pressing issue before rising. Parliament's own integrity would be on line if the vetting is approached with the blinkers of partisan interests.

Some MPs on the government benches are apprehensive. A Deputy Minister told The Accra Daily Mail that the Majority Leader has already announced when parliament would be rising and so would need all his powers of persuasion to get his colleagues on the minority side to agree to extend their sittings beyond Friday. The majority side would need no such prodding.

The judge himself is a highly respected member of the bench and has enough stature to command reverence from both sides of the House once the NDC hawks do not try to scuttle the hearings altogether.

Already yesterday the Speaker, Mr Peter Ala Adjetey suspended parliamentary sitting for more than two hours for lack of quorum.

He said the suspension was to enable the House to reconvene to take important procedural matters hinging on the 2002 budget.

At 1030 the Speaker who was visibly worried, said about 65 MPs in the house did not form a quorum to enable him to put questions that decisions could be taken on. He asked for the bell to be rung to bring in more members, who were said to be in committee meetings.

But Mr Cletus Avoka, NDC Bawku West, informed the House that most of the members were in committee meetings outside the House, such as the Ministries, which were still considering the 2002 budget estimates.

The Speaker said he feared that if the House did not meet to take those decisions, it could not rise sine die on Friday and would need additional three days to do that.

A member cut in to say that some members were in Bimbilla campaigning for the impending by-election.

This brought Kofi Attor (NDC Ho Central) to his feet to say that the NPP had about 109 of the members that would normally support it in the House and could conveniently and constitutionally allow their own budget estimates to be passed.

He said amidst laughter that he would give the Bimbilla telephone number to Mr Abraham Ossei-Aidoo, Deputy Majority Whip, to call all NPP members of the

House to come immediately.

With nothing to do, the Speaker suspended sitting at about 1100 to enable the House reconvene at about 1:00pm. He said the two hours break would enable them to put finishing touches to the budget estimates and return to the House.

Meanwhile, the President has directed the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice to suspend any further action on the prosecution of Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata pending the presentation on 20th March of the reasons for the Supreme Court's decision on the matter of the Fast Track Court and possible review of that decision, a statement signed by Jake Obetsebi Lamptey, Minister for Information and Presidential Affairs, said on Monday.