pm: Express<\/strong> on MultiTV, Nana Asante Bediatuo said he was convinced the suit will not succeed.<\/p>\nThe 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 \u2013 who have been blacklisted by judges pending a determination of their allegations of corruption against judges.<\/p>\n
The Forum wants the CJ to, \u201cStop 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
The group enjoined Mrs Wood to \u201cEnsure 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\u2019s mandate as it appears to have become a Labour Union which Judges and Magistrates are not allowed to form.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
A member of the FGJ, Dr Clement A. Apaak, who was also on pm: Express<\/strong>, 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.<\/p>\nHe 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.<\/p>\n
According to Dr Apaak, who is also a lecturer at the University of Ghana, the refusal of the judges to hear the four lawyers \u201chas 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have also looked in the constitution, we haven\u2019t 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\u201d Dr. Apaak explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the whole writ and what he is saying is a contradiction in terms,\u201d Nana Asante averred.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe notion is that you cannot just simply make allegations against people and you go scot-free; the fact that you have free speech doesn\u2019t 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!\u201d he maintained.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Nana Asante Bediatuo stressed the need for Ghanaians to remember that judges are special members of the society.<\/p>\n
For him, while technically all Ghanaians are equal before the law, judges are special people and must be helped to see themselves as such \u2013 that is the only way their decisions and rulings will be respected.<\/p>\n
\u201cI 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 \u2013 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 \u2013 the rule of law suffers,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n
Story by Malik Abass Daabu\/Myjoonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Read the rest here:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Constitutional lawyer, Nana Asante Bediatuo has said the suit filed by the Forum for Governance and Justice (FGJ) against judges and magistrates is frivolous and born of extraordinary bad faith. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":404659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-441636","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports"},"yoast_head":"\n
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