Remove Special Prosecutor: Timeline for CJ to form committee or respond to petition has passed – Martin Amidu

Former Special Prosecutor Martin Amidu has indicated that the timeline for the Chief Justice, Gertrude Torkornoo, to determine whether there is a case against his successor, Kissi Agyebeng, in the petition for his removal, has elapsed.

According to Amidu, if reports that the petition for Kissi Agyebeng’s removal was forwarded to Justice Torkornoo by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on May 6, 2024, are accurate, then the Chief Justice should have determined whether there is a case against the Special Prosecutor by June 6, 2024.

The former Special Prosecutor, in a statement copied to GhanaWeb, explained that the laws of the country require that the Chief Justice must determine whether there is a ‘prima facie case’ against Agyebeng within 30 days.

“The discussions on Joy FM, and later on other co-opted media houses, centred around Section 15 (2), (3), and (4) of the Office of the Special Prosecutor Act, 2017 (Act 959), even though some strayed to Article 146 of the 1992 Constitution. They highlighted two requirements under Section 15 of Act 959: '... The President shall, within seven days, refer the petition to the Chief Justice who shall, within thirty days, determine whether there is a prima facie case' and: 'Where the Chief Justice determines that there is a prima facie case, the Chief Justice shall, within fourteen days, set up a Committee consisting of ...'

“According to Joy FM’s supposedly leaked document, the President referred the petition to the Chief Justice on May 6, 2024, almost ten (10) clear days before she wrote to Kissi Agyebeng on May 16, 2024, and she must have read the petition to have formed a fair opinion before then. The mandatory thirty days for the Chief Justice to determine whether there was a prima facie case, by my calculations, expired on June 6, 2024. The fourteen days within which she was to set up a committee, should she determine a prima facie case, expired before today, June 20, 2024,” he wrote.

Amidu, a former Minister of State and Attorney General, also said that Chief Justice Torkornoo must let the petitioner and the people of Ghana know whether there is a case against the Special Prosecutor or not.

“It follows from the foregoing that the Chief Justice has an obligation to refer her determination of whether there was a prima facie case to the President immediately, as there shall be no need to set up any committee. Whosoever the petitioner is has a right to be informed soonest that no prima facie case has been made by the petition, and he has the right thereafter, according to the reasoning in the Dery case, to make the content of the petition known to the public to judge for themselves the determination of no prima facie case by the Chief Justice.”

Read his full statement below:



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