The Alliance for Social Equity and Public Accountability (ASEPA), says the response of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) to its petition requesting a probe of the Chief Justice is disappointing.

ASEPA petitioned CHRAJ on July 12, 2021, asking the Commission to investigate allegations of bribery and corruption against the Chief Justice under Article 218(a) and (e) of the 1992 Constitution.

But in a response to the request, CHRAJ declined to probe the matter because ASEPA had also petitioned the presidency which has begun work on the request.

According to CHRAJ, it took such a discretionary action because it realized that ASEPA had also petitioned the presidency over the same issue.

“Since the matter is pending in the appropriate constitutional forum, the commission, in the exercise of its discretion under Section 13 of Act 456, hereby ceases to investigate the complaint any further as the invocation of the Article 456 proceedings has effectively taken the matter out of the forum of the commission,” CHRAJ said in a letter addressed to ASEPA.

However, the Executive Director of ASEPA, Mensah Thompson in a Citi News interview described CHRAJ’s posturing as unfortunate.

“If you read the case in point that CHRAJ cited as the basis for truncating this process, they claim that when a plaintiff sues the same defendant in two courts, the plaintiff is elected to stay one of the proceedings and so when CHRAJ during their preliminary investigation realized that another constitutional process has been activated, did they write to us the plaintiffs to stay one of the proceedings and proceed with the other.”

“So with their own explanation, and their own case in point CHRAJ decided to unilaterally, violate the right of the plaintiffs by deciding for us which of the two processes to stay. We find this very unfortunate and disappointing”