Adamu Daramani Sakande
Adamu Daramani Sakande, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Bawku Central, has gone to the Court of Appeal over Justice Charles Quist’s decision to allow the state time to call another witness if it so wished.
He has therefore filed an application for stay of proceedings at the Fast Track High Court till the final determination of an appeal he has filed on the issue.
The MP, who is being tried for perjury at the Fast Track High Court, believes that once the ruling had to do with him being compelled to identify a document he did not know anything about, the judge should have stuck to that but not veer into others areas.
At the Court Of Appeal where the application for stay of proceedings was to be heard, the principal state attorney, Rexford Wiredu, who said he had “not filed an affidavit in opposition because I was out of jurisdiction”, raised a preliminary objection which he said would affect the content of the application filed by the MP.
The court presided over by S.E. Kanyoke told Mr. Wiredu to file his objection since it was a court of record. Mr. Kulendi on the other hand said the Attorney-General’s office was served with the motion.
Even though the state attorney admitted their office was served, he said it was at the time the Director for Public Prosecutions was not around and explained that he was not served.
He said the motion came with a court list and that was how he got to know he was to appear in court, adding that it had no date.
Mr. Kulendi said the application was originally endorsed with a date so it could not be possible for him to say he was objecting because the motion had no date.
He said counsel for the accused person, Yoni Kulendi should have filed the application at the High Court instead of bringing it to the Court of Appeal in accordance with CI (19) Section 28.
However, the trial Justices, S.E. Kanyoke, Aduana Osei and Dennis Adjei pointed out to the state attorney that under CI (19) Section 27, a lower court could not stay its own proceedings and explained that it was only in a case where an application for stay of execution had been filed that a court could stay its own execution.
Mr. Kulendi prayed the court to dismiss the objection because it had no legal basis, to which the state attorney said he wanted it to be on record.
The court ordered Mr. Wiredu to file his affidavit in opposition within seven days.
In the substantive case, counsel for the MP at the last hearing prayed the court to adjourn the trial of the MP for a short while to enable them to study the ruling he gave on allowing the prosecution to bring a witness to testify in the case if the prosecution so wished.
They said they had just received a copy of the ruling to study so would need time to study it.
The judge had ruled that it was wrong for the prosecution to have asked the MP to identify a document it brought from the National Security during a cross-examination.
The ruling puts to rest the legal wrangling by both the state and counsel for the accused person as to whether the MP should be made to identify a document addressed to the National Security Adviser from the United Kingdom, which he was not privy to.
Lead counsel for the Bawku MP, Yonni Kulendi told journalists after the ruling that he would study the ruling and decide whether or not to appeal against the ruling by the judge on allowing the state to bring a witness to testify on the document they wanted the MP to be cross-examined on.
Mr. Kulendi expected the judge to give a ruling only on whether it was proper for the MP to be compelled to answer questions on the document as that was the only issue before him.
The case at the high court has been adjourned to July 28, 2011.
By Fidelia Achama
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