The Minority in Parliament has given an assurance it has no intention of withholding the approval of the Chief Justice (CJ) nominee by consensus.
Justice Gertrude Araba Essaba Torkornoo, the Caucus said, is a person of considerable experience as captured in Curriculum Vitae, having served as a judge from the High Court of Appeal to the Court of Appeal and ultimately at the Supreme Court.
The side stressed women who have acquitted themselves should be given opportunities to occupy a key national office.
“Even as we disagree with her jurisprudence, we find her qualified to occupy the high office of Chief Justice of the Republic of Ghana,” the caucus stressed.
The Minority on Tuesday, June 6, 2023, addressed the media in Parliament on the reasons for the Supreme Court’s ruling in the James Gyakye Quayson case.
Minority members on the Appointments Committee during the vetting of Justice Gertrude Torkornoo demanded to be furnished with the ruling on the Gyakye Quayson case to inform their decision on her approval.
Member of Parliament for Bawku Central, Mahama Ayariga, who addressed the media on the position of the Minority explained the subject of the matter, James Gyakye Quayson is gearing to contest the by-election in Assin North constituency, which brought about the Supreme Court’s decision.
Speaking on the ruling delivered by the Supreme Court, Mahama Ayariga explained the facts of the case, not disputed at any time, are that Quayson at the time of being sworn in to become an MP had successfully renounced all allegiances to any other country and his allegiance was to Ghana.
According to him, the text in dispute of the case is Article 94(2)(a) of the 1992 Constitution which reads, “94(2) A person shall not be qualified to be a member of Parliament if he (a) owes allegiance to a country other than Ghana.”
“Fidelity to the text of the constitution of Ghana would have dictated that the controlling provisions in the resolution of the dispute are the word “qualified to be a member of Parliament”. Disappointingly, a professed textualist like our CJ nominee abandoned the text and chose to read into the text a replacement text “qualified to file nomination papers to contest for election as a member of Parliament.”
This, he said, is exactly why the Minority MPs on the Appointments Committee wanted to wait for the reasoning to see if the CJ nominee would be true to her publicly professed textualist approach to constitutional interpretation.
According to him, instead of fidelity to the text of the Constitution that the CJ nominee professed as her preferred approach to constitutional interpretation., she succumbed to a flawed precedent set earlier by the Supreme Court in the in Ex Parte Zanetor. Republic v. High Court (General Jurisdiction).