Queen mother sues CJ

The Queen Mother of Adansi-Fomena in the Ashanti Region, Nana Kwantwiwaa Apomaa II and two of her elders, one Opanin Kwabena Kusi and Opanin Yaw Amponsah have dragged Chief Justice (CJ), Georgina Theodora Wood to court.

They have accused her of trying to influence a case in which they are party to.

This was after the Chief Justice transferred a case in which they have sued the Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II and others over the purported destoolment of Nana Apomaa as queen mother of Adansi.

Acting on a petition brought before her by one Shahahu Mohammed, acting for the petitioners, the Chief Justice sought to transfer the case from Justice Paul Richardson to Justice Robin Batu.

The queen mother and the two elders are therefore seeking the intervention of an Accra Fast Track High Court to restrain the Chief Justice and her agents, servants and privies including another Kumasi-based High Court judge, Justice Robin Batu from implementing an order of transfer and or dealing in any manner whatsoever the subject matter of the order of transfer pending the hearing and final determination of the court process.

They have since cited Justice Georgina Wood for abuse of the powers entrusted to her as Chief Justice of the Republic by Articles 23 and 296 (a) and (b) of the country’s Constitution, describing it as “a flagrant breach of the cardinal principle of natural justice.”

Even though Article 23 of the Constitution confers on the Chief Justice as head of the Judiciary the right to exercise such administrative powers, the queen mother and her elders averred that “such powers must be exercised fairly and candidly with due compliance with the requirements of the law and by purporting to make an order of transfer most unfairly and most unreasonably without due process and without first hearing from the presiding justice of the High Court and the lawyer against whom the tendacious allegations were made.”

Apart from that, the Nana Apomaa and her elders insisted in their claims that “there should have been no indecent haste on the part of the defendant/respondent (referring) to the Chief Justice to fall for the malicious inventions in the petition.”

This, they stated, was in view of the fact that “the proceedings of the day were recorded in the record book of the presiding justice, yet no attempt was made by the head of the Judiciary to lay her hands on such record to appraise her of the actual situation on the ground.”

Furthermore, they claimed the Chief Justice “grossly abused her powers of transfer by failing to adhere to the mandatory provisions in Article 296 (a) and (b) of the 1992 Constitution which outlaw arbitrariness and capricious in public officers even the most august officers like the defendant.”

“As the head of the Judiciary responsible for administration and supervision of the Judiciary, a very high-standard is expected of her and like Caesar’s wife, her conduct should have been above suspicion,” they noted in their statement of case, for which reasons they emphasized that “in falling for the machinations in the specious affidavit of the Akyeamehene of the Otumfuo instead of abiding by the mandatory provisions of the said Articles of the Constitution, the defendant (for that matter, the Chief Justice) has grossly abused her office and rendered the order of transfer unconstitutional and null and void and of no effect whatsoever.”

It is therefore the contention of the queen mother and her elders that it is “only the authoritative intervention of this honourable court which can compel the respondent and his His Lordship Justice Robin Batu from trampling on the categorical imperatives imposed on them by the Constitution for the Supremacy of the law and the Constitution which are sacrosanct.”