The courts can’t gag Parliament – Gyampo

I maintain, both Oquaye and Bagbin were wrong in their rulings. But Parliament, being a Master of its own processes must find its own ways to address its challenges.

We cannot upset the balance of power between the arms of government in a manner that makes parliament subservient to the Judiciary and Executive.

The Judiciary has no power to gag Parliament, not in any serious democracy.

Parliament is the only truly representative arm among the three arms of government. Not all vote for whoever becomes the President and unlike other jurisdictions where judges are directly elected by the people to promote accountability, our judges are appointed.

It is only in Parliament that the entire citizenry are represented and hence in locating sovereignty among the organs of government, at least in theory, one is not wrong in placing it at the doorstep of Parliament. This is elementary in Government 1 for those of us who studied it for our O’Level Exams.

There is the concept of judicial review that grants the courts the power to take a second look at the laws made by Parliament and to declare them constitutional or unconstitutional.

But If people can get the Supreme Court to sit and decide over matters ruled on by the Speaker of Parliament with near speed of light, then our Parliamentary Democracy may have no future because we may always have to be going to the courts to be overturning Parliament’s decisions. This may not be judicial review, but judicial interference.

The courts must note their place within the balance of power and must not do anything that oversteps their boundaries because, I can predict that strong willed Speakers of Parliament, like Speaker Bagbin, would fight back to assert the independence of parliament over the judiciary and this can spell doom for the quest for countervailing authority.

Let us watch out for the response of Speaker Bagbin. But in matured democracies, it is fair for one to call for judicial deference to legislative actions.