Empanelling all Supreme Court Justices will halt judicial administration – Lawyer Nimako

A legal practitioner, Gary Nimako has said the call for the Chief Justice to empanel all the Justices of the Supreme Court to sit on the NPP petition challenging the 2012 elections results is unnecessary

“To call for the Justices to be made 13 and all that is really uncalled for; at the time that this case is still on-going the Supreme Court have other matters before the court, there are other matters still on-going.”

According to Mr. Nimako the call for the empanelling of all the judges of the Supreme Court will affect and ground the administering of justice. “It is practically impossible, it is not feasible. What you are calling for is that the Supreme Court should halt all the cases existing before the court and deal with only the NNP or NANA Akufo-Addo matter; until the determination of that matter no other case can go on and this will put on halt the administration of justice.”

Lawyer Nimako said the allegations of bias or prejudice does not call for the empanelling of all the Justices on the said case. “Granted that this case travels for even three months, are we saying that for all the three months no other case can go on in the Supreme Court except this case”, he questioned.

“I think the nine judges at the first instance is good.”

The Forum for Governance and Justice (FGJ) on Wednesday in a press released called on the CJ to consider empanelling all the Justices of the Supreme Court to sit on the NPP petition challenging the 2012 elections results.

According to the group this will eliminate the speculations on alleged biases of the judges which could undermine the outcome of the case.

“It will be best to just have all of them sit on the case so that when the verdict comes every Ghanaian will know that we had the benefit of whole number of our justices who are to the protectors of our constitutional democracy.”