[ad_1]
I woke up to the news that the SC had decided the Ayine v Amidu case by a 5-2 majority against the plaintiff.
It is good that this matter, although delayed, has ended. In a democracy, the Court has the last word and has spoken. All other views are just that.
He would have voted with the minority because Parliament does not have the authority to create a public service position that subverts the retirement age scheme stipulated by the Constitution.
The Constitution creates two types of public officials, one who can be fired only for cause and the other at will. See chart below.
At will, public officials are normally elected or serve at the discretion of elected officials. They may be dismissed at will by the electors or their designators. Because their tenure is dangerous at best, the Constitution does not specify the mandatory age.
Because of this, public officials are normally career officers and can only be fired for good cause. Because their tenure is guaranteed while they act properly, the Constitution establishes a mandatory retirement age. Here, the Constitution itself establishes that a few in this category must retire at age 70, others at 65 and all others at 60.
This means that, unless otherwise stated in package 70 or 65, a public official for cause must retire at 60.
The Special Prosecutor is a public service post for cause. It is not chosen nor does the occupant serve the designators. Clearly, it’s just a specialized prosecution charge.
In my opinion, the fact that the Constitution itself allows some public officials to retire at 65 and 70, does not mean that Parliament can also create posts that set the retirement age beyond 60 or that effectively alter the constitutional retirement scheme.
Otherwise, we are in a regime where all parliament must do is create a Special Teacher or Special Nurse position and stipulate that they serve for a period of 10 years, which then allows them to be appointed after mandatory retirement by 10 more years.
It is logically unpleasant that a DPP is mandatorily retired at age 60 only to be appointed to another public service prosecution position for a fixed term. If one is in charge of prosecuting corruption or prosecuting armed robbers, one should not determine the retirement age. At least, that facially absurd regime is not in the Constitution.
When the Constitution has provided an explicit scheme to govern the retirement of public servants, Parliament cannot create public service positions that are in fact not of retirement age. Nor, in my opinion, should the Supreme Court use an “intentional” interpretation to sanction such a parliamentary adventure.
Similarly, while the Constitution sets a minimum age of 40 for the President and 21 for a MP, that does not mean that Parliament can also begin to set its own minimum age limits for public service positions.
To me, all of this points to the importance of amending the mandatory retirement law to increase it to 70 and allow people to voluntarily retire at 60.
A final point worth mentioning is that it took the Supreme Court more than 2 years to determine this case. This is not good enough. A question about a person’s qualifications for a certain position should be resolved immediately. Ideally, it should be resolved before the person ascends to that office.
A delay in answering such a question is not only unfair, but also places the Tribunal in a precarious position where saying that the designee is disqualified raises questions about the Tribunal’s wisdom in allowing an unskilled person to hold office for more than 2 years in violation of the Constitution. Unconsciously, such delays may bias the Court toward a finding of constitutionality to avoid the dissonance of declaring unconstitutional after allowing unconstitutionality to persist for more than 2 years.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time that such an unacceptable delay has occurred. In fact, such delays, in urgent constitutional cases, have become the norm. The Court should find a way to address this problem, as it is causing the public to lose confidence and respect for these overdue opinions.
Many of these constitutional cases are about legal arguments and do not involve the testimony of witnesses. They can be resolved much faster than current practices allow.
128/1820 is a good faith scam and sham.
Give Yie!
