SPEAKER’S FOLLY OF SHUTTING DOWN PARLIAMENT AND CLOSING ALL COURTS IN UPPER EAST REGIONAL CAPITAL
THE SPEAKER’S FOLLY OF SHUTTING DOWN PARLIAMENT AND THE DECISION TO CLOSE ALL COURTS IN THE UPPER EAST REGIONAL CAPITAL.
BY MARTIN A. B. K. AMIDU
The non-strategic and non-tactical actions of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) through its caucus in Parliament and the Speaker in attempting to muddy the waters of stability for the country in less than two months to the 2024 election on 7 December by raising the needless issue of whether four Members of Parliament who exhibited an intention to contest the elections as independent candidates are still Members of Parliament under Article 97 of the Constitution has shut down Parliament and disabled it from performing its functions of oversight over the executive and judicial arms of government since 18 October 2024.
Whilst Parliament was abdicating its constitutional watchdog functions for purposes of political scheming and manoeuvring, Bawku was burning, citizens of Ghana were dying in Bawku and its environs, and on the road from Bolgatanga through Gbemsi, Sayoo, and Walewale in the North East Region to Tamale in the Northern Region without a word from Parliament. The consideration of other urgent government businesses by Parliament also gave way to selfish partisan politicking of chicken under the game’s theory (zero sum gaming).
The Speaker’s folly of shutting down Parliament instead of obeying the decision and orders of the Supreme Court given on 18 October 2024 was demonstrated by the decision and orders of the Court on 30 October 2024, almost one month to the 2024 elections. In the meantime, on 29 October 2024 the Chief Justice of Ghana in the purported exercise of her administrative authority under the Constitution closed seven courts in the most populous parts of the Upper East Region including, particularly, the High Court, Circuit Court, and three District Courts in the regional capital and its environs. The untenable reasons the Chief Justice gave for the unprecedented closure of the High Court in Bolgatanga and the other courts in its immediate environs was stated in the memorandum under the signature of the Judicial Secretary as follows:
“The attention of the Honourable Lady Chief Justice has been drawn to concerns expressed by Lawyers and other Stakeholders about the current situation in Bawku and its environs. In order to ensure the safety and security of Judges, Staff, Lawyers and Court users, the Honourable Lady Chief Justice has ordered the closure of the following courts with immediate effect, until further notice.....”
But for the folly of the NDC and the Speaker of Parliament, the House would have been in session and holding the Chief Justice’s administrative action of closing the High Court and other courts in Bolgatanga and its environs to account for her actions on the spurious reasons assigned and the unprecedented nature of her action in the history of Ghana taken so close to an election on 7 December 2024 that must be free, fair and transparent under the 1992 Constitution.
The Chief Justice after the spurious reasons assigned for the closure of the courts on 29 October 2024 was reported by Citi News to have defended her administrative action during the launch of the fifth edition of the Manual on Election Adjudication on Thursday, October 31, 2024, held at the Law Court Complex Auditorium in Accra as follows: “The decision to temporarily shut down the courts was made on October 29, 2024, after rising security concerns were reported by court staff and judges working in the affected areas.” The Chief Justice’s defence is naive and a pertinent exhibition of ignorance of the geography and history of the region as it overlooks the fact that throughout the Bawku conflict over the decades the regional capital of the Upper East Region has never been and is still not in the conflict area.
In the absence of a functioning Parliament in session, I, as a citizen of Ghana and a native of the Upper East Region speaking on my own behalf, and on behalf of citizens from the Upper East Region who have reached out to me to speak on for them as an elder hailing from the region, wish to bring to public attention by asking the Chief Justice who the lawyers and the stakeholders, she wrote about in her memorandum dated 29 October 2024 and published in the media are. Do they include lawyers and stakeholders from the Upper East Region? I ask this question because:
(a) The Upper East Regional Bar Association has to the best of my knowledge, information, and belief not met to pass a resolution requesting the closure of any court in the Upper East Region, including, particularly the High Court and the courts within the environs of Bolgatanga, the regional capital.
(b) The Upper East Regional Security Council (UE-REGSEC) which has the first line of responsibility for the security of the region under the 1992 Constitution to the best of my knowledge, information, and belief has not met and decided on the closure of any courts in the Upper East Region. UE-REGSEC would have been the first line of complaint for the supervising High Court Judge and other stakeholders of the justice system in the region.
(c) The Upper East Regional House of Chiefs has not to the best of my knowledge, information, and belief met to resolve to request the Chief Justice directly or through the UE-REGSEC to close any court in the region, and in particular the High Court and lower courts in the environs of the regional capital.
(d) The citizens of Ghana who reside in the Upper East Region have not to the best of my knowledge, information and belief appealed to the Chief Justice to close the courts in the region, particularly in Bolgatanga and its environs.
(e) The citizens of Ghana generally have not to the best of my knowledge, information, and belief as stakeholders of the judicial process and in whose name justice is administered and the security of Ghana has been assigned to the executive branch expressed a consensus about the closure of the courts in any part of the Upper East Region, let alone in the regional capital and its environs.
(f) The information I have received from the Upper East Region indicates that all state and private institutions including the hospitals, banks, civil society organizations are functioning normally within the regional capital and its environs to render it discriminatory for even the UE-REGSEC to have singled out the High Court and other courts in the environs of the regional capital for closure to warrant the statement that “rising security concerns were reported by court staff and judges working in the affected areas” as a reasoned justification for the Chief Justice’s administrative decision.
I am competent to ask the foregoing questions and to make the statements based on my knowledge, and the information at my disposal because there are few people from the Upper East Region better situated to articulate the concerns of the region as knowledgeable citizens on the antecedents of the Bawku chieftaincy conflict than me. I have been involved in attempts to resolve the Bawku fratricidal conflict starting from February 1983 when I was the PNDC Deputy Secretary, and later the Acting PNDC Secretary for the Upper East Region, the PNDC Deputy Secretary for Local Government and Rural Development, the Deputy Attorney-General from October 1988 to 7 January 2001, and the Chairman of the Public Agreements Board who participated in PNDC decision making from 1989 to 1993 including decisions on the Bawku conflict. I was also the Minister for the Interior, and the Minister responsible for the Security and Intelligence Agencies, and later the Attorney-General and Minister for Justice under the NDC 2 Government and involved in the management of the Bawku fratricidal conflict until I exited the government on 19 January 2012 over disagreements about the unconstitutional payments in the Woyome case.
Indeed the proscription of the use of motorcycles and the wearing of smocks, which are still in force in Bawku and its environs was made when I was the Minister for the Interior, and the Minister responsible for the Security and Intelligence Agencies. The intractable chieftaincy conflict in 2010 was then worse than it has been this year. The High Court in Bolgatanga and the other courts within its environs have never been closed by the several Chief Justices who served this nation until 29 October 2024.
The Upper East Regional Minister appears to have ceded control of the Upper East Region to the central government, otherwise the people of the region should be hearing directly from the UE-REGSEC about what it is doing to bring the crisis under control as has always been the practice over the decades. The UE-REGSEC never issued any statement on the Bawku crisis since its inception in October 2024 until the return of the President from the Commonwealth meeting in Samoa which gave rise to the reasoned press release by the Minister for the Interior on 28 October 2024, in contrast to the Chief Justice’s published memorandum closing the High Courts and other courts in the region the next day.
Any good security and intelligence watcher and analyst can predict that something is amiss in the management of the Bawku crisis this October which has dovetailed into the closure of the courts in the regional capital by the administrative fiat of the Chief Justice. I will say no more in order not to contribute to fanning the flames of discontent any further.
The Ghana Bar Association (GBA) in its attempt to support the Chief Justice’s administrative action put into question the credibility of her assigned reasons for the closure of the courts in the regional capital of Bolgatanga and its environs. Saviour Kudze, the Public Relations Officer of the GBA was reported on 31 October 2024 to have told Citi News, inter alia, that:
“The Chief Justice is the head of the judiciary. So I believe she is always in constant touch with the security agencies. And following the developments as announced by the Chieftaincy Minister, I believe they have advised her on the intelligence that they have picked up, which must have necessitated the closure of the courts.
I shudder to think of the insinuation by the GBA that the Chief Justice took her administrative decision based on the instructions she received from the National Security Council or its agencies without recourse to the stakeholders and users of the judicial system in the Upper East Region as she had stated in her memorandum. Coincidentally, she closed those courts the day after the return of the President to the country in the afternoon of 28 October 2024. The blind support of the Chief Justice in any administrative action she takes by the GBA is dangerous for our Constitution, democracy, and the rule of law.
I will not out of fidelity to the values underpinning the 1992 Constitution disobey the decisions and orders of any court sitting as a Court let alone make any scandalous comments on any of their decisions including the Supreme Court whether presided over by a Chief Justice or another justice of that Court. But the unbridled support of anything and everything the Chief Justice says or does in her administrative capacity borders on sycophancy which no respected citizen or public institution must do.
The perennial bloody fratricidal conflict that has been raging for decades in Bawku and its environs over the decades affects northerners personally and the attempt to use it to cast northerners as the only people with such conflicts in the country and shutting down courts even in one of our regional capitals without any reasonable excuse is unacceptable. The days when the northerner was referred to as Konongo Kaya is long gone and the Chief Justice should not be allowed to treat any part of Northern Ghana in a far more demeaning manner than even Her Imperial Majesty treated the British Protectorate of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast Colony in colonial times. Why has Her Imperial Chief Justice not closed the courts in other regional capitals with chronic and intractable violent chieftaincy, land, and other primordial conflicts in the Republic of Ghana?
We the People demand Parliamentary oversight of the administrative decision of the Chief Justice to close the High Court in Bolgatanga and its environs, NOW! The Chief Justice’s administrative decision has grave ramifications on the rights and freedoms of the people of the Upper East Region, both natives and citizen residents, to access justice and in particular on issues pertaining to free, fair and transparent 2024 elections at least cost in the region that could be brought in the High Court, Bolgatanga, between now and beyond 7 December 2024. The Speaker of Parliament and the NDC should ensure that Parliament comes into session immediately to deal with all urgent government business and to hold the decision the of Chief Justice for the first time in the history of Ghana in closing the High Court in a regional capital on the flimsy ground of a conflict that is occurring far away from the regional capital to account. Everyday lost by Parliament to deal with issues of governance and the security of the nation including the 2024 elections poses a grave danger to our Constitution and the rule of law for which the NDC stands to regret the most.
Martin A. B. K. Amidu
1 November 2024
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