Private legal Justice Abdulai has bemoaned the comments of the spokesperson for the petitioner in the ongoing election petition hearing at the Supreme Court Dr. Dominic Akuritinga Ayine, describing it as unpalatable and undesirable to the court.
He said this in an interview with Johnnie Hughes on the New Day show on TV3, Wednesday, February 17.
Mr. Abdulai hinted that the press briefings by the spokespersons of the parties to the case, that is the petitioner and the second respondent is laudable, in trying to explain what goes on in court in layman’s language for the ordinary populace to understand but went on to criticize the attacks leveled against the justices by Dr. Ayine on Tuesday, February 16.
“The press conferences, they are very good, to the extent that they seek to educate the mass of supporter of these political parties, to the extent that they break down the issues for the ordinary man to understand, it is very good. What unfortunately has become the negative aspect of this, which I condemn, has been the consistent attacks on each other and sadly both sides have quite good lawyers doing these campaigns and insulting each other, sometimes in raw languages, in fact, honestly, I didn’t care about that, if you want to insult yourselves on air so be it but the attacks on the supreme court is what has become worrying” he said.
He emphasized that “being lawyers and the petitioner’s side is made of former Attorney Generals, then the Akuffo-Addo side is made up of former ministers of state and other fine lawyers that I know on a personal note and they take this microphones and the only thing you hear from their mouths are consistent insults when they know how to address their concerns, there are proper mechanisms put in place by law and procedure. If you disagree with the decision of a court, there’s a procedure to address that, if it doesn’t go in your favor after exhausting all the processes and realms available, so be it, it is not supposed to be a must-win affair, somebody must lose”.
“Court is not a football match where there’s a draw, it never draws, regardless of what happens somebody must lose and someone must win but at the end of the day, I think the parties are being over-emotional and politically too sensitive in this matter and this is taking away their level of maturity from handling this matter the way it ought to be and for me that is the saddest thing. The worst part of it is the comments of yesterday by Dr. Ayine, this is a former Deputy Attorney General for Christ’s sake, saying the kind of things he said about the supreme court, this is a person others look up to, this is a nice man, very intelligent, as far as I know, and the kind of comments he made was so unpalatable, so undesirable, in fact, so unlike him that I just couldn’t believe he was saying some of these things”.
“People were calling for contempt and other things but I think that is too much, considering the kind of person he is, it may not be fair but the bottom line remains that these people know better, they ought to know better if they don’t know already, that we are all helping to build a sustainable democracy, so if you think there’s pressure from your supporters, there’s a better way of addressing them without getting their hopes unreasonably high” he charged on the New Day.
