Opinions of Sunday, 3 November 2024

Columnist: Prof. Dinkum

The wisenheimer of Alban Bagbin has accorded him to be balloon by the Supreme Court

Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin

The Ghanaian courts have sanctioned the efflorescence of legal doctrines as requisite nutrients for the delectation and burgeoning of rights and obligations under the law within the Ghanaian ascendancy. One such procedural doctrine is 'locus standi' or the capacity of a party to invoke the supervisory jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of Ghana.

This permits the Supreme Court to exercise constitutional oversight responsibility over the exertions of all other courts in Ghana. This strength emanates from Article 132 of the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana. Since the evolution of the Courts (Barrett, 2006) as bastions of the protection and imposition of justice, the Supreme Court has been ascribed with the 'supervisory power'.

The object of the development of the supervisory jurisdiction as a premise of the exercise of the powers of the Superior courts is to persist in being second-banana courts within their prescribed territory, thus deterring the situation of jurisdictional annexation, the dose for miscarriage of justice (Dickerson v. United States, 2000).

It urges for the moderation of such control to certify the issue of indispensable and felicitous writs. In other common law jurisdictions such as the United States, the law in this area is unambiguous; superior courts have supervisory authority over the federal courts, and such may be used to advocate rules of evidence and procedure that are binding on tribunals.

The prescription of this power is not a nuisance within the Ghanaian legal system, for the execution is akin to the other global world. This stamp bestowed on the Supreme Court illuminates to us the extraterrestrial bureaucracy of the court, coupled with its untrammelled legal athleticism.

However, I was frozen to the marrow when Alban Bagbin desired to pilot the edge of the Supreme Court after the court activated its legal prowess, of which he acted pertinaciously to the Supreme Court's bidding. His heteroclite attitude towards the Court was nothing at all but a hokum exercise. Alban Bagbin has therefore cast aside his reputation and parliamentary probity.

The rudimentary of his case was constitutionally puerile and redundant, such that it is generally perceptible that the Supreme Court is authorized to interpret every portion of the Constitution where it is riddling.

At this point, the Supreme Court is the dragoman of the 1992 Constitution; hence their clout is airtight. This scenario materialized once again when Justice Paul Uuter Dery sought the interpretation of Article 146(8) of the 1992 Constitution in the case termed, Justice Dery v Tiger Eye. Therefore, the hallucinatory comportment paraded by the Speaker and the Minority Caucus that the Supreme Court had no such discretion has proven to us that they were wet behind the ears; thus, their crusading was full of immutable oafishness and fatuity.

The arch part was when Alban Bagbin directed his lawyer, Thaddeus Sory, to make that colourable claim that his office wasn't served at the germane time - and his lawyer agreed to that futile tutelage. A soi-disant lawyer, who is being paid ¢300,000 for the conduct of any constitutional case, couldn't decipher that such a call was gratuitous.

It is incontrovertible that Alban Bagbin wanted his legal grifter to impoverish the country's kitty by submitting to him his ¢300,000 honorarium, even though he knew his case had no substance. The Supreme Court knows the nitty-gritty of their regulations and for that matter, it wouldn't cock a snook at it wittingly; having latched on to the magnitude and extremity of that case.

The constitutional proficiency of Alban Bagbin can never outrank and eclipse the constitutional edification of the Supreme Court - not for a moment! Come to think of this, if Alban Bagbin was agitating that he wasn't served rightfully well, why did he take on board the advent of the 'writ' during the parliamentary proceedings then?

He could have made light of it in case it took no notice of Article 117 of the Constitution at that moment. This alone gives the symptom that Alban Bagbin was playing to the gallery and in fact, it has made him a sweeping flibbertigibbet. His interminable bent nature has prejudiced his long-standing partisan political cachet.

Aside from Alban Bagbin's political parti pris in the dispatch of his constitutional duties, he is being eluded by 'commonsense', in that, why should Alban Bagbin envisage that parliament is immune to the hegemony of the Supreme Court as far as interpretations of the constitution are concerned when the constitution itself gives them that definite and defined calibre?

It is a gross levity to his position as the Speaker (legislator) and the constitution as well, and as such, he must eat humble pie at the Supreme Court, the Parliament House, and Ghanaians for the strain he has emerged along this constitutional ruckus, for he has induced respite on the country's economic intensification in order to recuperate his station, which has fallen into tatters.

So, now that the Supreme Court has dinned into Alban Bagbin the exigency to abrogate his vacancy declaration, would he endorse it or demur it? The Supreme Court has spoken and it is the ultimate. Indeed, Alban Bagbin is a tummler!!