General Secretary of the PNC, Bernard Mornah, has been beaming with smiles all day in what he termed a victory for citizens of Ghana after he won a writ he filed at the Supreme Court seeking to nullify portions of the Constitutional Instrument 74.
He described yesterday’s ruling as a landmark decision, which he said is indicative of the fact that Ghanaian citizens can rely on the provision of the 1992 Constitution that it is superior to any other law.
He told Joy News there are certain provisions spelt out clearly in the constitution which cannot be tampered with, and warned against actions that sought to undermine those provisions; rather they should be protected, he said.
Rule 71B of C.I. 74 provides that the decision of the Supreme Court in respect of a petition presented to challenge the election of a President cannot be reviewed.
But lawyers for Mr Mornah argued that to the extent that Rule 71B of C.I. 74 seeks to extinguish the constitutional right in Article 133 of the constitution to seek a review of a decision of the Supreme Court in presidential election petitions, same is unconstitutional, null and void, and of no effect.
The five member panel which sat on the matter Tuesday upheld the lawyers’ argument. It also ruled that the Supreme Court sitting on public holidays will be unconstitutional. For instant, Bernard Mornah averred that if the courts will sit on holidays including Ghana’s Independence Day on 6th March, it would have meant that the “courts do not recognize our independence; our independence that gives them the right to exist as the bench of Ghana. Certainly I thought there were some infringements there.”
He told Joy News his legal team was convinced that he had a “potent case” that is why they pursued the “just cause’ in the face of criticisms.
He remarked, “I got so much bashing but I stood on my grounds, knowing that I was pursuing a just cause”.
Meanwhile, a law lecturer, Godwin Adawine has described the ruling as an improvement of the terrain for justice, and has also deepened Ghana’s democracy and rule of law.
He disagreed with the suggestion that the ruling would unnecessarily delay the ongoing election petition.
“Talking about delay, don’t you forget that we cannot rush every process, because there is a saying that when you rush justice then you deny it. We cannot for the reason of peace sacrifice justice. If it is true justice that we want and it will take us a certain length of time to get it, then in my view it’s better to endure that than to rush and have a problem that we will not want to have in our hand.”
