Former Auditor-General Daniel Yao Domelevo, who was a member of the five-member committee that probed the petition for the removal of former Chief Justice, Gertrude Torkornoo, has reacted to some of the allegations made by the sacked justice against the committee.
Speaking in a recent interview on The KSM Show, Domelevo refuted most of Justice Torkornoo’s allegations of intimidation and human rights abuses by the committee during the hearing.
Domelevo laughed at Justice Torkornoo’s claim that the hearing on the petitions for her removal was held at the “cordoned high-security zone,” Adu Lodge, “to intimidate her.”
He explained that the Adu Lodge was used for the hearing and not a facility of the Judicial Service because the committee was set up by the presidency and not the judiciary.
“So, one may ask, why not the court complex or the Judicial Service? The answer is very simple. All other committees under Article 146 are the Chief Justice’s committees. It is the Chief Justice who sets up the committee, so he decides where they sit.
“But when the petition is against the Chief Justice, it is a Presidential Committee. It is the president who sets up the committee. So, it is not for the Chief Justice to tell us where to sit; it is for the president to tell us where we should sit. So, they found a place for us,” he said.
Daniel Yao Domelevo also refuted the claim that Justice Torkornoo’s rights were violated because she was searched before entering the venue for the hearing.
He said that all the committee members, including the Supreme Court justices on it, were searched by the security team.
On Justice Torkornoo’s claim that her family was prevented from joining her at the place of the sitting, the former Auditor-General said that because the hearing was held in camera, only persons involved in the sitting could be allowed in there.
“If you look at the constitutional provision under Article 146, it provides that the proceedings should be in camera. Now, if you allow the Chief Justice to come in with her husband and her daughter, what about the petitioners? Would they be allowed to come in with their spouses and their children?”
He added that should the former CJ have been allowed to come to the hearing with her family members, her own people would have gone to court to say the hearing was not in camera, as the Constitution of Ghana instructs.
Domelevo also laughed at Justice Torkornoo’s demand for her hearing to be public, saying, “Maybe the type of constitution or the version of the constitution she reads is different from the one I have read. The constitution is categorical; it says the hearing must be in camera.”
