Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has criticised the Attorney General, Godfred Dame, over comments he made on the minority’s injunction application at the Supreme Court. He indicated that the perversion of justice may only give him short term victories.
Mr Ablakwa revealed that such “arrogance of power and the perversion” of justice cannot be allowed to triumph. He explained that the AG’s action is not what “we seek to do with power”, as such it must not be allowed to fester and become the “cancerous” new normal.
“The perversion of justice may give you short term partisan victories but over the long term you destroy the soul of the nation and the foundations of our constitutional democracy while sufficiently arming those hardliners who will seek to use these precedents to embark on a mission of vendetta in the near future.”
Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa
Contained in a Facebook posted made on May 5, 2022, Mr Ablakwa highlighted that the Attorney General continues to make “outrageously prejudicial media statements” claiming what the plaintiffs put before the court is propaganda. He noted that Mr Dame’s stance on the matter became clear when he “suggested that we didn’t have a cause of action” by filing the suit. That notwithstanding, Mr Ablakwa revealed that the Supreme Court took a step to hear the substantive matter on the case.
“Imagine what the Supreme Court would have done to our lawyers if they were the ones conducting themselves in such unethical and irresponsible manner which is clearly of the most pompous and despicable kind as being exhibited by the Attorney General, Godfred Dame.”
Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa
Subsequently, the North Tongu legislator posed series of questions to the Attorney General demanding to know whether it was propaganda when the minority staged a walkout which left only 136 NPP MPs in the chamber.
“Is it propaganda that the decision-making quorum under Article 104(1) of the 1992 Constitution is 138 — half of members present and voting? Is it propaganda that for all the major decision points in the Electronic Transfer Levy Bill from second reading to the various amendments at the consideration stage, all the way to the third reading saw 136 NPP MPs voting instead of 138? Is it propaganda that Adwoa Safo and Kojo Kum were not in the parliamentary chamber present and voting?”
Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa
Attorney General denigrates performance of Minority
The Attorney General, on May 4, 2022, following the dismissal of the court injunction motion by the minority noted that the performance of Godwin Edudzi-Tamakloe, a lawyer for the minority was an “embarrassing spectacle”. Mr Dame revealed that Mr Edudzi-Tamakloe failed to provide evidence to back his arguments in the Supreme Court.
“The lawyer clearly was not able to demonstrate any form of irregularities with proceedings in Parliament. The court asked him, is there any record that indicates that X number of MPs walked out at a certain stage? He obviously said no; there was no evidence indicating whether there was a headcount of a number of MPs present in Parliament who voted to support the bill. There was also nothing indicated by the lawyer which suggests there was a walkout of X number of MPs. So, I think we should ignore all that propaganda.”
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