Renowned constitutional lawyer Professor Kweku Asare is set to return to the Supreme Court for interpretation if the General Legal Council’s new legislative instrument legitimizing entrance exams at the Ghana School of Law is passed.
Speaking to 3FM a day after the Council and the Subsidiary Legislation Committee of Parliament met to iron out differences, the human rights lawyer wondered amending a parent act and then simultaneously passing an LI that will be subsumed.
“This is the most absurd thing ever,” he said.
Professor Kweku Asare expressed concern some 3,000 students have automatically qualified to be admitted for the professional training as lawyers under the laws of Ghana yet the new LI has failed to address the backlog.
He posited that the Supreme Court had indicated the law to govern admissions in 2018 must be in place by December 22, 2017, adding the only law that will govern admissions in 2018 is the LI 1296.
“This new LI will do nothing for 2018 and the LI is completely flawed.”
The accounting professor noted that what the GLC has given Parliament is just a bill with a couple of provisions.
He observed that in the unfortunate case that Parliament allows the LI to pass, he will go to court to find out if the LI 1296 will govern the admission or whether due process was followed before the LI was passed.
In a separate statement he issued, the constitutional lawyer sought to find out a so-called secret bill to amend the Legal Profession Act that the Deputy Attorney General showed to some members of the Subsidiary Legislation Committee that presumably flipped them to recommend the passage of the “obnoxious” LI.
He said if a bill exists to amend the Legal Profession Act, then what is the need to replace the current LI 1296 with an obnoxious LI that is so flawed that it lacks even an explanatory memorandum describing the problem that it seeks to solve?
“Why this secrecy surrounding the bill? Why this last minute appearance of this Trojan bill?” he quizzed.
He said Ghanaians are being asked to swallow what he described as ‘Ananse logic’.
Professor Asare called on government to level with the people and desist from the current utter silence and last minute secret revelation of a bill to a committee for the sole purpose of securing passage for a very “obnoxious LI”.
“It is unsettling and completely unacceptable,” he emphasised.
He challenged government to declare where it stands on the fate of 3,000 students whose intellectual properties have been forcibly taken by the “unruly GLC”, adding “the time to stand for something is now”.
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