There were fireworks at the High Court as two lawyers battled it out over whether or not a judge could sit on a matter after he dismissed another case of similar facts.
The case is seeking to reverse the Electoral Commission’s disqualification of former first Lady Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings from contesting for President in next month’s elections.
Counsel for the former first lady Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings who is the presidential candidate for National Democratic Party (NDP) was opposed to Electoral Commission’s counsel Thaddeus Sory’s motion to have Justice Kyei Baffour recuse himself.
Background
Last week Friday, Justice Eric Kyei Baffour ordered the EC to allow PPP Presidential candidate Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom to correct ‘errors’ on his presidential nomination forms which formed the basis for his disqualification by the EC.
He described the EC’s conduct in disqualifying Dr. Nduom on the basis of the ‘errors’ as ‘extremely perverse’ and the EC’s explanation of a point as ‘pedestrian’ and ‘peripheral’.
The Commission has taken its case to the Supreme Court seeking to quash the judge’s decision.
The EC is in the meantime fighting off four other suits from presidential candidates who are seeking to achieve the same objective as PPP.
The NDP case is one of them.
EC lawyer Thaddeus Sory starts onslaught
In court Friday, Thaddues Sory said ‘My Lord, we have a motion before you praying that you recuse yourself from proceedings. Essentially,the grounds is that the previous ruling has taken a position on a specific matter and that same matter is crucial for this one’
Sory said “Given your previous position, it does not sit well in the eyes of any reasonable person that you will depart from that position”
“In the interest of fair play, My Lords must recuse himself,unless they have a reason for being in this court”
Justice Kyei Baffuor wanted Sory to demonstrate any judicial impropriety for which reason cousel for EC wanted him to recuse himself.
Providing three resons, Thadeus Sory stressed that the judge had the propensity to be biased.
“You have prior knowledge to the facts, you have taken a position, the rule of bias doesn’t only work when you are related to a party in the matter”
He also said the counsel for the applicant had actually used portions of the judge’s argument in their case before the court.
“They have made their argument in line with a position that the court has already taken,” he maintained.
Thaddues Sory also raised questions about the style of the judge’s writing in his judgment.
“The words you even used, you could see personal things in there, in your ruling you used expressions such as “bereft of substance.”
But rising to challenge the EC’s motion, Ace Ankomah said ‘we are opposed, it’s not because we have a desire to engage in judge shopping. Such a motion must tell more.”
He cited a case in which Justice Amissah made an argument to stress the point that it will be wrong for a judge to run away from the judgement seat on the mere allegation of bias.
He said the judge has a clear duty to conduct a meticulous investigation on the allegation. “Your duty, my Lord is not to run away, but to check whether the allegation has substance.”
According to Ace, none of the reasons proferred by Thaddeus Sory constitutes a valid reason for recusal.
“Their affidavit only says on account that you have heard another matter that is similar, second is that in your writing you showed some bias, the third being even in this case, you have showed bias”
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