Supreme Court to rule on Anane's case November 14

The Supreme Court presided over by the Chief Justice, Justice Georgina Wood, will on November 14 rule on whether a Fast Track High Court has the jurisdiction to interpret the Constitution.

The application for Certiorari, a writ issued by a higher court to obtain records on a case from a lower court so that the case can be reviewed, was filed by the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice.

The application seeks to revoke the supervisory jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to quash a judgment by a Fast Track Court, presided over by Justice Baffoe Bonnie, that the Commission does not have the jurisdiction to investigate Richard Anane, MP for Nhyiaeso and former Road Transport Minister in the absence of any formal complaint.

Counsel for the Commission, Nene Amegadzie, noted that the trial judge in passing his judgment refused to look at the true and proper construction of certain provisions in the Constitution of the functions of the Commission and purportedly interpreted the Constitution, which he should have referred to the Supreme Court for interpretation.

He said there was ambiguity in the Constitution as to how a complaint should be received, citing Article 218(a) and 218(e), which talks about how to investigate a complaint, as being conflicting.

On his part, Counsel for Anane, Joseph Kwesi Agyemang, said they have repeatedly held that the provisions of the law on the subject matter and the language used was quite clear. He observed that just as CHRAJ has the right to interpret and apply the Constitution, as does the High Court Judge.

He said so far as the defence is concerned the definition of corruption is irrelevant to the subject matter before the court. He said if CHRAJ thought there is an ambiguity in the law, it did not complain about it but assumed jurisdiction and sat on the matter, but fortunately, his client was cleared of corruption.

Mr Agyemang noted that corruption was not one of the issues that the court heard, but rather conflict of interest, abuse of power and perjury.

He pleaded with the court to deny completely the application of CHRAJ.

On September 16, 2006, CHRAJ found Richard Anane, guilty of abuse of power and of conflict of interest. He was however innocent of corruption.

It was recommended that Dr Anane be removed from office for committing perjury by misleading a CHRAJ panel whilst under oath that he had remitted $30,000 to his mistress, while in a prior testimony before a Parliamentary Select Committee during his vetting as Minister of Road Transport in 2005, he told members that he had only remitted $10,000.

It was also recommended that Dr Anane apologise to Parliament for misleading it and to the President and people of Ghana. CHRAJ said the decision was made pursuant to Section 7 and 18 of the Act establishing and governing the Commission's acts. Specifically, the Commission set out to look into allegations of corruption, conflict of interest and the abuse of power leveled against the Minister.

However, on March 13, 2007, a Fast Track High Court held that judgements of perjury and conflict of interest pronounced against him by CHRAJ, which led to his resignation in December, were invalid.

The court ruled that CHRAJ's decision to investigate Dr Anane based on media reportage and not on any formal complaints from an identifiable person(s) was a recipe for chaos, irrespective of the good intentions of the Commission.

It said CHRAJ wrongly assumed jurisdiction in the matter and therefore, all the decisions and recommendations so far related to the enquiry on Dr Anane should be removed from the records of the Commission and squashed.