A Justice of the Supreme Court, Yonny Kulendi, is proposing the enactment of specific laws to solely regulate parliamentary election adjudication.
Apart from this, he also proposed an amendment of Ghana’s laws to allow for electronic service in civil litigations to be considered.
He argues that electronic service which is the service of a document on a person by either electronic transmission or electronic notification, has the propensity to deal with the legal gymnastics incduing delays that some play in the procedure of service.
Making several proposals while speaking at an inter-party dialogue organized by the National Peace Council in Accra on Thursday, December 14, he also proposed that parliamentary elections should be held in November, one month earlier than the usual December 7.
“‘Hold] elections in November in an election year which is a month earlier to enable disputes to be resolved within a shortest time frame before the business of government gathers momentum,” he said.
He also proposed “a review of the provisions of the laws and procedures on parliamentary election petitions, specifically the Representative of the People Act and the High Court Civil Procedure rules to provide a specific time frame within which such petitions will be heard and determined. For instance, an abridgment could be considered, the time could be reduced from 21 to 14 days after Gazetting. A new law to solely regulate parliamentary election adjudication with specific timelines for filing petitions, limitations on appeal, limitations on amendments, and serving of further particulars etc could be considered.
“The use of an adoption of electronic service as a means of reducing delay in service and proof of same which is usually an issue during civil litigations. Since we all now converse by WhatsApp and we all use emails, in other jurisdictions electronic service is actually the way. That will take out this whole legal gymnastics that people play around the procedure .”