The Supreme Court will later today, Monday, January 4, 2021, hear the State’s suit challenging the order of the Ho High Court granting an injunction against the swearing-in of John Peter Amewu as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Hohoe.
This was after the State through a Deputy Attorney General, Godfred Dame, filed a motion last week Wednesday for an abridgement of time for the expeditious hearing of the case.
The court granted the request and ordered both the State and the interested parties represented by Tsatsu Tsikata to file their statement of claim by December 31, 2020, for the case to be heard today.
In the suit, the State said the ruling from the Ho High court “constituted a patent error” since it did not have the capacity to hear the matter.
“The High Court has no jurisdiction under article 33 of the Constitution to entertain a matter in the nature of a parliamentary election petition and to grant any reliefs(s) interim, interlocutory or final, available in a parliamentary election commended under article 99 and section 16 of the Representation of the People’s Law, 1992 (PNDC 284).”
“The proceedings of the court below and the orders emanating therefrom dated 23rd December 2020, were void as same were in violation of article 99 of the Constitution,” the State noted in its application.High Court injunction
The Ho High Court on December 23, 2020, presided over by Justice George Buadi granted an interim injunction restraining the Electoral Commission from gazetting Mr. Amewu as the MP for Hohoe.
This followed an ex-parte application filed by residents of the Guan district who were not given the opportunity to vote in parliamentary elections.
Eligible voters within areas in the newly created district; namely Santrofi, Akpafu, Likpe, and Lolobi, were only allowed to take part in the presidential election on December 7, 2020, but could not vote in the parliamentary election because a constituency had not been created for them.
The applicants demanded the enforcement of their fundamental human right to vote.
