A private citizen, Benjamin Tetteh Yemoh, has filed a lawsuit at the Accra High Court seeking, among other reliefs, a declaration that Speaker Alban Bagbin’s pronouncement of four Parliamentary seats as vacant is constitutionally valid.

The applicant, in the suit filed on Friday, October 25, 2024, also asked the court for an interlocutory injunction stopping the Speaker from recalling the House until the determination of all pending suits related to the four affected seats.

This follows the decision by the Speaker on Tuesday, October 22, 2024, to suspend the House indefinitely.

The Speaker’s decision was informed by a ruling of the Supreme Court suspending his declaration of the four seats as vacant.

But according to the applicant, the ruling by the Speaker, grounded in Article 97 (g) and (h) of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana, is valid and should be upheld by the High Court.

He has therefore asked the court to also restrain the affected MPs from accessing Parliament or joining any sitting of the current Parliament.

The leader of the New Patriotic Party Caucus, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, who applied to the Supreme Court for the decision to suspend the Speaker’s ruling, has also sent a memo to the Speaker triggering Article 112 (3) of the Constitution and demanded an urgent recall of the House.

Meanwhile, his substantive suit against the Speaker’s declaration remains pending at the Supreme Court. He had asked the court to suspend the Speaker’s ruling for ten days; however, the court, in granting his injunction application, suspended the declaration until the determination of the substantive suit.

Read details of the High Court suit below:



GA/KA

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