The Minority Caucus in Parliament boycotted the vetting of three nominees for the Supreme Court bench on Thursday, August 27, 2026, after calling unsuccessfully for the exercise to be postponed.
In a statement read to the press, the caucus said Speaker Alban Bagbin had referred five names to the Appointments Committee on Monday, two ministerial nominees and three Supreme Court nominees, at the start of an emergency recall of Parliament that was due to end the following day. The Minority objected to the Majority's plan to have all five vetted, reported on and approved within that four-day window.
The caucus said it was willing to proceed on the two ministerial nominees, Mahama Ayariga for Local Government, Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs, and Dr Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings for Environment, Science and Technology, on a fair and sensible timetable. But it drew a firm line on the three Supreme Court nominees, Justice Sophia Bernasko-Essah, Justice Amoako Asante and former Ghana Bar Association President Tony Forson, arguing that Article 144(2) of the Constitution, which governs judicial appointments, could not be properly satisfied in four days.
The Minority cited several Standing Orders it said the Majority was disregarding. It argued that Order 217(11)'s three-day reporting requirement applies only after a committee concludes its proceedings, not from the point of referral, and that Order 267(4) normally allows committees up to three months to report on referred matters. It also pointed to Order 217(2), which requires the Chairperson, Ranking Member and two other members of the relevant subject committee to join the Appointments Committee for each nominee, and Order 217(10), which requires nominee names to be published so the public can submit input. The caucus said none of these safeguards had been formally suspended through the process set out in Order 3, which requires a motion, a vote and stated reasons before any rule can be set aside.
The Minority argued that no vacancy currently exists on the Supreme Court bench, since the court is sitting with its full complement of justices, and that the nominees would be additions rather than urgent replacements. It contrasted the pace of this process with the one-year wait before government named replacement ministers following the helicopter crash that killed several officials, including former ministers, arguing that a genuine emergency had not warranted such urgency then.
The caucus also renewed its call for the House to take up its motion on alleged $1.7 billion in losses linked to GoldBod and the Bank of Ghana, as well as concerns raised over recent nationwide power outages, describing both as more deserving of urgent attention than adding justices to a court that is not short a seat. It said the Speaker had admitted the GoldBod motion for consideration but had ruled it out of order for the current special sitting, a decision the Minority said it respected while maintaining reservations.
The Minority said it would place its objections on record and noted that any citizen retains the right under Article 2 of the Constitution to challenge the lawfulness of the process before the Supreme Court, should the vetting proceed as planned.
