The Supreme Court has on Tuesday, April 26 dismissed application to review the voting rights of the Deputy Speaker of parliament.
The application was filed by a private legal practitioner Justice Abdulai who was asking the apex court to review its March 9 judgement concerning whether the deputy speaker should vote during parliamentary proceedings.
The apex court ruled that a Deputy Speaker when presiding over parliamentary proceedings has the rights to vote and can be counted as part of a quorum for decision making.
He urged the court to set aside its decision insisting it had occasioned a miscarriage of justice. Deputy Attorney General Diana Asonaba disagreed with this view.
She told the court its review decision was limited to correcting an obvious error and drawing the court’s attention to matters that were not available to it or could not have been found.
“The long reference to previous constitutions does not meet the criteria for a review application. The plaintiff has failed to show how a miscarriage of justice has occasioned or showed any new matter that should have been considered. Present application is unmeritorious and a clear abuse of the court process”, she said.
In its decision, the Supreme Court presided over Justice Jones Dotse dismissed the application indicating that it had failed to meet the threshold required for a review case to succeed.
“The application is accordingly dismissed,” Justice Dotse said.
The review case was heard by Justices Dotse, Nene Amegatcher, Prof Ashie Kotey, Lovelace Johnson, Mariama Owusu, Celemenfe Honyenuga, Gertrude Torkonoo, Prof. Mensah Bonsu, Emmanuel Kulendi.
