Professor Kwadwo Appiagyei-Atua has opined that following the Electronic Transaction Service levy (E-levy) debacle, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has learnt lessons from the case and would want to respect the law while waiting for the Supreme Court’s determination on the applications for injunction filed against him and the legislature.
Parliament unanimously passed the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill 2024 on Wednesday, February 28. President Akufo-Addo has yet to assent to the bill.
Meanwhile, two separate applications for injunction have been filed before the Supreme Court against the bill.
Private legal practitioner and journalist Richard Sky, in his suit, is praying to the Supreme Court to, amongst other reliefs, give an “order restraining the President of the Republic from assenting to ‘The Human and Sexual Values Bill, 2024”.
According to Sky, such action “will directly contravene the constitutional safeguards of liberties and rights of Ghanaians”.
Prof. Appiagyei-Atua, in an interview with Keminni Amanor on Ghana Tonight on Tuesday, March 19, said, “When an application for an injunction is issued against a party to a suit, we have to wait for the court to determine whether the injunction should hold or not before any action can be taken,” adding, “so it is incumbent on the Clerk of Parliament not to take any action until the court has determined the matter”.
“Whether the injunction is thrown away or upheld, if it is thrown away, then what it means is that it paves the way for the Clerk of Parliament to submit the bill to the President and the President will be compelled and obliged by the constitution as well as the rules of court to accept that”.
He stressed that the President would be violating the rules of court if he should accept the bill and assent to it pending the determination of the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, the MP for the Old Tafo constituency, Vincent Ekow Assafuah, emphasised that the onus lay on the lawyers of the plaintiffs or the court to have found that the President acted contemptuously in signing the E-levy bill into law.
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“In the case of the E-levy it is the duty of the lawyers who went to court by way of that application or the court itself to find anybody for contempt of court,” he said, adding, “We cannot answer those questions”.
Three to five years of imprisonment for promoting LGBTQ+
The bill, if assented to, prescribes between three and five years imprisonment to persons found guilty of willful promotion, funding, and advocating for LGBTQ+ activities prohibited under the act.
Also, persons who publicly identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, an ally, or pansexual face between two months and three years of imprisonment.