Former Deputy Attorney-General, Dr Dominic Ayine has accused the current Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, Godfred Dame Yeboah of unethical legal behaviour.

The accusation follows the revelation by the Attorney-General that he got the Supreme Court to expedite the hearing on an injunction application against the approval of ministers which has since been dismissed by the apex court.

In an interview with Raymond Acquah on Upfront on March 27, the Member of Parliament for Bolga East explained that the Attorney-General took an unethical approach to the case, subverting the rules of procedure in order to secure an advantage.

“Unfortunately, he is not giving a good impression of ethical conduct as a lawyer. I am being very honest and upfront with you on this one. The reason is simply because if you want the court to give an expedited hearing, there is something we call an application for an abridgement of time. You file that, you serve it on the other party and then they can prepare themselves and come to court on the abridged date.”

“You don’t go nicodemously to the registrar of the court or to the CJ who is the chief administrator of the judiciary to ask for the thing to be abridged then the registry abridges time for you and then serves notice on the other parties to come to court immediately. That is unethical. You are subverting the rules of procedure in your favour,” he said.

The Director of Legal Affairs of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Godwin Edudzi Tamakloe, also criticised the process adopted by the Attorney-General as irregular.

Mr Tamakloe explained that, according to the rules of procedure, a formal application must be filed and the opposing party must be served with notice before any hearing takes place.

“Attorney General has never filed any application for abridgement of time which is on record,” he said.
In response to these accusations, the Attorney-General said that the NDC was demonstrating a lack of understanding of the legal process.

He insisted that he did nothing wrong by seeking an expedited hearing for the case.

“Some say when you have a certain or a fixed time and you seek to bring the date forward that is when you are abridging the time. Where no date has been fixed, it is absolutely the duty of …to cause a matter to be fixed for hearing. So I certainly wrote a letter to her Ladyship and asked a new date for hearing. That’s the letter on record. As it’s done by all practitioners who know the workings of the rule of court. I have done this many times.”

The Attorney General also dismissed calls when asked if he would use the same procedure he used to get an expedited hearing for the ministerial nominee's case to get an expedited hearing for the case filed against the anti-LGBTQ bill passed by

“There are many parties to the action. Of course, I expect the Supreme Court to deal with the answer as quickly as possible. Stop this unnecessary play to the gallery. There is an Easter vacation. It is in the rules of the court. Did I inform the public of the letter I was writing before I wrote it?

"I never did it and I do not reveal my strategies to the media and I’m saying we are actually constrained by the Easter vacation. If I write it’s up to the Chief Justice to exercise administrative discussion and that request may be ignored,” he said.