Not even the President and his Vice can disobey our orders – SC

The Supreme Court has stated categorically that not even the President and his Vice President can disobey its orders, timings, or judgments.

The court, without mincing words, posited that disobeying the orders of the apex court amounts to high crime.

On Wednesday, October 30, 2024, the Supreme Court dismissed an application by Speaker of Parliament Alban Bagbin, praying to overturn its stay of execution of four parliamentary seats as vacant.

The decision by the court followed the initial suit filed by Effutu MP Alexander Afenyo-Markin, challenging the Speaker’s declaration.

Lawyers for the Speaker argued that the Supreme Court lacked jurisdiction in this case, among other grounds canvassed in court.

The court, however, dismissed the application, maintaining that its earlier ruling was appropriate and stating that the speaker’s appeal was without merit.

This was after it had heard arguments from all parties, including the Attorney-General and Minister for Justice. The Chief Justice, who chaired the panel, was emphatic that the orders of the court cannot be disobeyed since that would amount to high crime. The panel of the court affirmed that the Speaker’s application amounted to “misinformation and misapprehension of the law.”

According to the court, the speaker’s submission that the court had no jurisdiction in the matter was misconceived because the matter in question was a clear case of constitutional interpretation. “It is therefore misinformation and misapprehension of law for the applicant to represent that the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction to give interpretation on a provision of the constitution that has attracted two different meanings,” the court declared.

The Supreme Court also declared its decision to grant the stay of execution of Speaker Alban Bagbin’s declaration of four seats vacant because no by-elections could lawfully be held to replace the affected MPs between October 17, 2024, and January 7, 2025. Chief Justice Gertrude Torkornoo, the chair of the five-member panel that presided over the matter, stated that this was a factor that weighed heavily on the Supreme Court’s decision to grant the stay of execution.

“This exceptional circumstance arising from the outcome of the ruling weighed on the mind of the Supreme Court to grant an order directing a stay of execution of the ruling of the Speaker on 17th October 2024.”

“It is therefore disingenuous and wrong, including being an act of disinformation, for the argument to be presented that the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court could never be evoked to determine a constitutional interpretation because of the High Court’s jurisdiction to hear and determine disputes on elections and vacation of seats of Members of Parliament under Article 99.

“Our clear view is that Article 99 gives the jurisdiction to hear cases involving questions on the validity of election or vacation of seats of a Member of Parliament and the Speaker. It does not in any way take away the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to interpret and enforce any provision of the Constitution, including Article 99 itself,” the Chief Justice said.

“We are satisfied that administrative procedures cannot override the potency of legality, and every procedure used by the Supreme Court to serve the processes of the Speaker of Parliament was actually in conformity with law and the circulars issued by the Chief Justices in 2021 and 2024.”

She added that the ruling by the court followed concerns about the Speaker’s declaration of the four seats as vacant, which would prevent the affected MPs from continuing to represent their constituencies.

“The four constituencies in the Western Region, Ashanti Region, Central Region, and Eastern Region of Parliament are made up of hundreds of thousands of Ghanaians who had been cued to elect these members of parliament to represent their interests in Parliament as their voices.

“By declaring that their duly elected representatives in Parliament had vacated their seats for acts that were interpreted within the light of Article 97 (1)(g) by the Speaker, the Speaker was actually enforcing this interpretation of Article 97 (1)(g) against those hundreds of thousands of Ghanaians and not just the four people that sit in Parliament.

“He was also doing so at a time that, from the official records of Parliament presented to the Supreme Court, the Speaker knew that a contrary interpretation was being placed on the same constitutional provision and that the Supreme Court jurisdiction had been invoked to provide the correct interpretation,” she said.