A lawsuit filed by Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor, a Member of Parliament for the South Dayi Constituency, challenging the government’s direction to keep the metropolitan, municipal, and district chief executives (MMDCEs) in their positions as acting officials has been unanimously tossed out by the Supreme Court.
The lawsuit was in response to the Chief of Staff’s order in 2021 for MMDCEs to hold their positions until replacements were named.
The President needed well over nine months to appoint the new ones.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) MP had contested the President’s authority to keep the MMDCEs in office after the establishment of a new administration that was still headed by Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
“The MMDCE is not a position to be played around with. I want to know if the President can appoint a temporary Supreme Court justice. Why did the President wait until he was done with consultations before asking someone to represent him in the ministries? And the law allows for a reasonable amount of time to do that, but if it is excessively incorrect, it becomes unacceptable,” Mr. Dafeamekpor raged on Accra based Television, TV3.
“This is a constitutional violation. The method by which you are asking people to serve in a particular capacity is against the provisions of the constitution.
From the highest court in the land, he requested nine reliefs.
This included that “all liabilities or obligations or demands placed on the Republic of Ghana as a result of the acts, decisions, orders, agreements, or contracts entered into by the acting District, Municipal, and Metropolitan Chief Executives during the period of their acting capacity are not binding on the Republic of Ghana.”
The seven-member Supreme Court, presided over by Justice Jones Dotse, ruled on Wednesday, May 3 that the suit lacked merit.
