The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) and a former Deputy Attorney General, Dr. Dominic Ayine, have vowed to face Chief Justice Kwasi Anin Yeboah squarely in the attempt to drag Ayine to the General Legal Council (GLC) for disciplinary actions because he criticised the Supreme Court’s ruling in the last Presidential Petition.
According to Dr. Ayine, he stayed within the bounds of fair and temperate speech in his views on the 2020 election petition judgment when he spoke on a CDD- Ghana platform recently.
The General Secretary of the NDC, Johnson Asiedu Nketia today validated the position of Dr. Ayine, saying the party stands behind him in his resistance against the “what is increasingly becoming a campaign of judicial tyranny being waged by Chief Justice of the Republic of Ghana against lawyers who identify with the NDC.”
Dr. Ayine has come under pressure since the Chief Justice took issues with his views on the said criticism of the Supreme Court.
A few weeks ago, the Chief Justice addressed a letter to the Chairman of the Disciplinary Committee of the GLC accusing Dr. Ayine of stating that “the Supreme Court’s failure to apply the rules of procedures as well as the consistent and continuous dismissal of the petitioners’ applications or reliefs were the basis of his assertion.”
However, Mr. Ayine in an eleven-paged response insisted that his comments did not attack the reputation of the justices who sat on the election petition case.
“With all due respect to His Lordship, the Chief Justice, I wish to state that I stand by the opinion I expressed at the said roundtable discussion. I am firmly convinced that the opinion I expressed neither imperilled the independence of the judiciary nor did it cause any actual or potential harm to the reputation of the individual justices nor did it cause any actual or potential harm to the reputation of the individual justices who sat on the case.”
Other legal luminaries have questioned the motives of the Chief Justice in his witch-hunting of Dr. Ayine.