President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has stated that the Supreme Court’s decision on Deputy Speakers’ voting rights cannot be interpreted as judicial interference in Parliament’s work.
The suggestion that Parliament is above the scrutiny of the Supreme Court, according to President Akufo-Addo, is to suggest that Parliament is a law unto itself.
“I’m not sure people who say this have actually read our country’s Constitution.” It’s written in black and white. The State’s legislative powers, which are vested in Parliament, are subject to the provisions of the Constitution. “All organs of the Ghanaian state, including myself as the Head of the Executive, are subject to the Constitution’s teachings,” the President said.
“There is no body in the Ghanaian State that is above the fundamental law of the land,” he continued. It will lead to the very thing we have worked so hard to avoid – the concentration of unregulated power in our state – which we do not want. And we drafted this Constitution to prevent that from happening again.”
President Akufo-Addo stated this in a media interview on the sidelines of Dubai Expo 2020 on Thursday, March 10, 2022.
He was surprised by how quickly the “public energy” dissipated in the debate, but he was pleased with the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision, especially since it is the most emphatic way in which the Court can pronounce.
In response to suggestions that the Parliament is immune from Supreme Court scrutiny on interpretation issues, the President stated that “the entire principle of judicial review was developed by the judges, both in America and England, to be able to check the activities of Parliament.”
Indeed, he stated in Ghana that the first major constitutional case that examined the work of Parliament was in the case Tuffuor vs Attorney General, where the Act of Parliament, the decision of the Parliament to subject the then Chief Justice, the late Frederick Kwesi Apaloo, to a vetting process in Parliament had been expressly forbidden by the Constitution.
“And that is why the late Dr. Amoako Tuffuor brought the matter to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court made it quite clear that all the activities of all the institutions of our Republic that impugn, that violate the Constitution are subject to the powers of the Court and to the Declarations of the Court,” he explained. President Akufo-Addo went on, saying, “As President, as Head of the Executive, I am subject to the Constitution and the law.” I can’t elevate myself above it. Everyone has a remit, but those remits are subject to the operations of the Constitution, and I am pleased that the Supreme Court has so emphatically declared the Constitution, which I support.
