A leading private legal practitioner, Justice Abdulai, has sounded the alarm on the potential for abuse in the process of removing a Chief Justice in Ghana.
According to Abdulai, the President’s discretionary powers in appointing a committee to determine whether there is a prima facie case for removal are a recipe for disaster.
Speaking on Channel One TV’s ‘The Big Issue’ on Saturday, March 29, Abdulai warned that the lack of regulation in the process creates an environment conducive to abuse.
“Unless you have a president who is very open-minded. If you have a mischievous president, he would make sure will get people who are in line with his political ideologies. And if he gets three other people who belong to his political party, we are doomed. We are completely doomed.”
Abdulai emphasized that the current system allows a President to manipulate the process to achieve their desired outcome.
“It is in view of these dangers inherent in the entire constitutional architecture in the removal of the CJ that I would strongly recommend that, rather than leaving these matters to discretionary powers and the whims of other people, we have a regulation to make matters simple, straightforward, forward and reliable.”
To address these concerns, Abdulai advocates for the introduction of regulations to standardize the procedure.
“A structure must be legally, statutorily determined to remove the discretionary and the lacunas that are currently inherently existing. It is the best way we can move forward on this matter, but unfortunately, we have to deal with what we have now.”