LMVCA Stops Police

Pressure Group Let My Vote Count Alliance (LMVCA) yesterday won its case challenging the legality of Circuit Court decisions prohibiting it from holding street protests.

The High Court, presided over by Justice Dominic Dennis Adjei, a Court of Appeal judge sitting with additional responsibility, held that it was improper for police officers desiring to stop a street protest to obtain an injunction from the Circuit Court on ex parte.

It maintained that Circuit Courts could not hear and grant a motion to stop any citizen from exercising their constitutionally guaranteed rights of freedom of assembly and expression or protest.

Justice Adjei said the law requires police officers to go before a justice or chairman of a tribunal but judges of the Circuit Court are not justices and therefore lack jurisdiction to preside over a matter bordering on the enforcement of this provision.

Public Order Act
The police usually rely on the Public Order Act, 1994 which requires persons desiring to hold a public event to notify the police in writing not less than five days before the event.

It says 'Where a police officer notified of a special event under subsection (1) has reasonable grounds to believe that the special event if held may lead to violence or endanger public defence, public order, public safety, public health or the running of essential services or violate the rights and freedoms of other persons, he may request the organisers to postpone the special event to any other date or to relocate the special event.”

It adds that “Where the organisers refuse to comply with the request under subsection (4) or fail to notify the police officer in accordance with subsection (5), the police officer may apply to any justice or a chairman of a Tribunal for an order to prohibit the holding of the special event on the proposed date or at the proposed location.”

But the group, dissatisfied with the conduct of the police, went to court to seek clarification on whether or not it was appropriate for a Circuit Court to entertain matters arising out of the enforcement of the Public Order Act.

The High Court also ruled that it is crude and improper for police officers to appear before courts with ex parte motions seeking to prohibit the holding of street protests and other public events.

The police, Justice Dennis Adjei said, must come on notice and allow the other party or parties to state their case.

This, he said, would enable the Court to determine whether or not there is merit in the arguments of either side.

The group recently clashed with the police when it attempted to picket the Electoral Commission Office to push for a new voters' register.

LMVCA had argued that the register used for the 2012 general elections was flawed and could not be relied on for credible elections.

As a result, many members of the group were brutalised by police personnel when they deviated from laid down routes during a protest.

The police insisted however that they used minimum force to prevent the protesters from violating the court’s orders.

A DAILY GUIDE Report