Parliament has approved the appointment of three Justice-designates to the Supreme Court, despite objections from the Minority Caucus over how the vetting process was conducted.
The nominees, Justice Edward Amoako Asante and Justice Sophia Rosetta Bernasko-Essah, both Justices of the Court of Appeal, and Anthony Forson Jr., a private legal practitioner, were approved by majority decision at both the committee and plenary levels.
Presenting the Appointments Committee's report, its Chairman and First Deputy Speaker, Bernard Ahiafor, said the Minority Caucus had raised preliminary objections to the vetting during the public hearing. He said although the objections were responded to, Minority members of the committee staged a walkout and stated that "they have washed their hands from the rest of the processes leading to the vetting of all the three nominees." He said that following the vetting, the majority of members present and voting recommended that the House approve the three nominees, having satisfied the constitutional requirements under Article 104.
Justifying the Minority's decision to oppose the approval, the Minority Leader, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, said the Caucus did not support the appointments for "good reasons." He said the two ministerial nominees and the three Supreme Court nominees had been referred to the Appointments Committee on Monday, and that the emergency recall of Parliament, which ended on the day of the vote, left the committee with only three working days to vet five nominees for two of the most consequential classes of offices in the Republic.
He said the Minority raised a preliminary objection before a single question was put to the three judicial nominees, based on nine distinct grounds drawn from the Constitution and Parliament's Standing Orders, but the objection was dismissed by the committee's chairman. Following that dismissal, he said, the Caucus withdrew from the proceedings. "What this House is now asked to adopt is a report produced afterward by Majority members alone," he said.
Afenyo-Markin stressed that the Minority's objection was procedural and not directed at the nominees themselves, urging the House not to portray it otherwise. "Our objection, as I have already stated, has nothing whatsoever to do with the persons of Justice Sophia Bernasko-Essah, Justice Amoako Asante, or Mr Tony Forson. We have not questioned, and we do not question today, the character, the competence or the standing of any of the three nominees before this House," he said, before outlining the nine grounds on which the Minority had based its preliminary objection to the vetting.
