The Member of Parliament (MP) for Bolgatanga East and key member of the legal team of the NDC was dragged to the Disciplinary Committee of the General Legal Council (GLC), the regulator of the law profession and legal education in Ghana, by Chief Justice, Justice Kwasi Anin-Yeboah.
Chief justice Anin-Yeboah had stated in his petition that the statements Dr Ayine is alleged to have made during the roundtable discussion scandalised the judiciary and justices who sat on the 2020 presidential election petition.
But the NDC at a press conference addressed by General Secretary Johnson Asiedu Nketia said they stand with Dr Ayine against what they described as a “campaign of judicial tyranny being waged by the Chief Justice of the Republic against lawyers who identify with the NDC and that the petition is an attempt by the Chief Justice to intimidate and suppress other views similar to that of Dr Ayine”.
Speaking to this effect on New Day on TV3 Tuesday, June 22, Dr Boako said it is the right of the Chief Justice to call for anyone who flouts the principle of the law profession before the Disciplinary Committee of the General Legal Council.
“We shouldn’t also lose out on the fact that when you speak and exercise your right and I think that the right that you have exercised in one way or the other also runs out of a certain principle or a certain ethics of our profession, I also have the right to call on the appellate body that has been set up to look into such matters to do so.
“And so it is also within the right of the Chief Justice as having been the head of the legal profession, if I may be right to put it that way, in the country that somebody who is part of the profession and the association says something and he finds that that thing was said out of bad faith or was not put right for him to call the General Legal Council to sit on the matter and to adjudicate on it. It is not a judgement in a sense.”
He added that the call to investigate Dr Ayine based on his comments cannot be termed as prejudicial but rather a critical look into the comment regarding the Election Petition hearing.
The Bolgatanga East MP allegedly questioned the independence of the judiciary due to the manner the Supreme Court adjudicated the election petition hearing.
The petition signed by the Judicial Secretary, Justice Cynthia Pamela Addo, stated: “These comments are made against the backdrop of the Supreme Court discharging Di Ayine on a charge of contempt for similar comments made against members of the Supreme Court during the Election Petition hearing. Dr Ayine apologised profusely when he appeared and admitted to having made comments which were unbecoming of a Lawyer of his standing and a former Deputy Attorney-General”.
On May 31, 2021, the Disciplinary Committee of the GLC wrote a letter to Dr Ayine for his response.
In the response to the Committee, the former Deputy Attorney General stated that after reading through the contents of the complaints to the Committee he is convinced he made blameless comments at the event organised by the Centre for Democratic Development-Ghana (CDD-Ghana).
By Belinda Worwornyo|3news.com|Ghana
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