Dear Dominic Akuritinga Ayine:

I applaud you for your bold step in Parliament aimed at exercising oversight over the unruly GLC. I must also acknowledge your speech at the Bar meeting in Kumasi two years ago. It proved valuable in the litigation that resulted in GLC's admission activities being declared unconstitutional.

Unfortunately, as you are no doubt aware, the illegality persists even though the declarations were made a month ago. It goes without saying that no branch of government can order anyone to violate the Constitution. This creed must be etched in our collective conscience. Alas, students who are qualified under the law for automatic admission to the School of Law are being compelled to take an unconstitutional examination, surrounded by an army of armed policemen, to decide who qualifies for admission.

Parliament should seize your initiative and step in now to supervise the Council's modalities for the orderly admission of all the qualified students. That will include using virtual schools, the existing faculties, private schools, etc. We have to be creative and understand that unusual times call for innovation. We cannot start solving this problem if we accept the current obsolete model as a binding constraint.

In my mind, when an administrative body does something that the Court declares unconstitutional that thing must stop immediately. This is why the 300M cedis district election was cancelled in 2015 on account of a defective CI.

Prospective overruling applies to things that were legal at the time that they were done. For instance, the declaration that night soil removal is unconstitutional can only be prospectively applied because it was legal till it was declared otherwise. Further, practical considerations alone will require some time to build the needed replacement toilets.

The doctrine does not and cannot operate to sanction the illegal actions of administrative bodies, especially when rights are still being litigated. The entrance exam, unlike the toilet, was never legal and remains so. So too is the IEB, the illegal body set up to write and administer the illegal entrance examination!

Sadly, that illegal examination is going on today, amidst heavy police security, and will, unless Parliament intervenes, be used to rob more people of their fundamental human rights. An administrative illegality can never be blessed to continue into the future as is happening here. That student are conscripted to engage in unconstitutionality and denied their substantive interest in their professional education should surely interest Parliament. There is no room for such an outcome in a country that values the rule of law!

I, therefore, applaud you for your forthcoming statement. But it must come soon, no later than the end of the day. Time is of the essence and nothing is more urgent than arresting the admission crisis at the school of law, brought about by the inertia of the GLC.

We should figure out an orderly and quick way of making whole the 2,000 or so students who have been constitutionally wronged!

In my opinion, the GLC has failed. It can't do the job. It has shown no strategic ability to grow the school of law to accommodate the students. It cannot even follow its own regulations. In Court, I contrasted its record to Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. It is not even close. How long can we countenance such nonperformance?

So part of the conversation should be about restructuring it.

We need to amend Act 32. What is needed is a Council for Legal Education that is responsible for administering a Bar exam, which will be opened to anyone with an LLB+, a degree or degrees that incorporate(s) the current year spent at Makola.

Once again, I applaud your interest in this matter and I hope parliamentary actions come soon enough to halt the impending unconstitutional interviews and to emplace an orderly system to accommodate the backlog created by the GLC's illegal and unconstitutional activities!

I have no faith in the GLC and, in my opinion, its members have lost the moral grounds for remaining in office.

Da Yie!