A justice of Ghana’s Supreme Court, Yaw Apau, has bemoaned the situation where judges are insulted in the country.
He said persons who insult judges mostly do not know anything about the law or have no idea about the issues before the court.
He said this while expressing deep concerns about the utterances of former Deputy Attorney General, Dr Dominic Ayine, regarding the hearing of the election petition, which the court deemed contemptuous.
“Sometimes judges are insulted by people who know nothing about the law and sometimes [by people] who know nothing about the issue that is before the judge and they talk and insult.
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“If they are not lawyers, we don’t care, because if you don’t want to be insulted, you cannot be a judge but if you are a lawyer, who knows the law and who knows the procedure and then you talk in a manner that does not speak well of you as a lawyer, it gives the opportunity to non-lawyers to also talk or say worse things. So that is my advice to you [Ayine] as my brother,” he said.
Dr Ayine has apologised to the court over his contemptuous comments against the justices of the highest court regarding the ongoing election petition hearing.
The Supreme Court on Monday, February 22, 2021, ordered the Bolgatanga East lawmaker to go and retract comments he had publicly made which the court deemed contemptuous.
This was after he wrote an apology letter to the court.
He had earlier said in a media interview that the decision of the Supreme Court not to allow the petitioner reopen his case to subpoena chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Mrs Jean Mensa, was “predetermined”.
This, the court deemed scandalous and brought contempt charges against Dr Ayine, a case which was heard Monday.