In his opinion the FGJ not only lacked locus to sue the Association of Judges and Magistrates but also was seeking to exacerbate the already precarious situation of the judiciary.
Speaking to Mr Nii Arday Clegg, host of pm: Express on MultiTV, Nana Asante Bediatuo said he was convinced the suit will not succeed.
The Forum for Governance and Justice last week petitioned the Chief Justice, Mrs Georgina Theodora Wood, to intervene in the matter involving four lawyers – Dr. Raymond Atuguba, Abraham Amaliba, David Annan and Larry Bimi – who have been blacklisted by judges pending a determination of their allegations of corruption against judges.
The Forum wants the CJ to, “Stop the wanton victimization of the four lawyers who made comments about the perceived corruption in the judiciary. We believe that they exercised their inalienable right to free speech and should not be prevented from practicing their profession from which they derive their livelihood and also that the clients of these lawyers should not be denied their constitutional right to a lawyer of their choice. We make this demand in full knowledge that the General Legal Council, the only body that can debar them had not yet heard the four lawyers.”
The group enjoined Mrs Wood to “Ensure that the Association of Magistrates and Judges does not become a threat to judicial independence as it appears to becoming. Also the need for a review of the Association’s mandate as it appears to have become a Labour Union which Judges and Magistrates are not allowed to form.”
The group subsequently followed this petition with a suit seeking a declaration amongst others, that the Association of Magistrates and Judges is an illegal organization and therefore has no mandate to refuse to hear cases involving the four lawyers.
A member of the FGJ, Dr Clement A. Apaak, who was also on pm: Express, said it was the view of the Forum that the Association of Magistrates and Judges should not be allowed the power to determine which lawyer should appear in the court of law or not.
He argued the four lawyers as any other citizen had a right to free speech and even so when their alleged offending statements were made at a forum organized by the National Commission for Civic Education.
According to Dr Apaak, who is also a lecturer at the University of Ghana, the refusal of the judges to hear the four lawyers “has constitutional implications by virtue of the fact that the NCCE has the constitutional mandate to organize the type of event at which they (the four lawyers) spoke.”
“We have also looked in the constitution, we haven’t seen anywhere that the association can draw any type of authority from that would allow it to influence the decision as to whether a particular lawyer should be accepted by its members in the court of law or not. So that is what has forced us to challenge the legitimacy and the ability of the association to refuse to hear the lawyers” Dr. Apaak explained.
“But the whole writ and what he is saying is a contradiction in terms,” Nana Asante averred.
He said a solid argument could not be based on the simple fact that the comments of the lawyers were made on a platform organized by a constitutionally mandated body.
He said even in Parliament where Members of Parliament cannot be sued with respect to what they say on the floor of the House, complaints can be made to the Privileges Committee where MPs can be sanctioned.
“The notion is that you cannot just simply make allegations against people and you go scot-free; the fact that you have free speech doesn’t mean that you can go to a forum for NCCE and say this judge is corrupt or that judge is corrupt or this politician stole money, because it is NCCE!” he maintained.
Nana Asante Bediatuo, who is also a Fellow at the Danquah Institute, said the argument of the Forum for Governance and Justice that the formation of the Association of Magistrates and Judges contravened the Labour Act, was jurisprudentially untenable.
According to him, while the Labour Act expressly forbids persons who hold decision-making positions from unionising, the law does not prevent people from forming associations, for that would be violating the 1992 constitution which guarantees freedom of association.
Nana Asante Bediatuo stressed the need for Ghanaians to remember that judges are special members of the society.
For him, while technically all Ghanaians are equal before the law, judges are special people and must be helped to see themselves as such – that is the only way their decisions and rulings will be respected.
“I think that the way to dealing with judicial corruption is not by impugning the integrity of judges wholesale; I think that people should be bold enough – even lawyers who believe that their clients have engaged in misconduct in that sense – to report the judges, the registrars, and those people who do these sort of things because it is not good to have a judiciary that is embroiled in that sort of controversy consistently – the rule of law suffers,” he noted.
Story by Malik Abass Daabu/Myjoonline.com/Ghana
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