This dissenting opinion contends that Ghana’s constitutional institutions have undermined the right of appeal and the rule of law by acting on supposed “vacancies” that are still being actively contested in court.
It criticises the President, Parliament, the courts, and the Electoral Commission for entrenching Justice Paul Baffoe‑Bonnie as Chief Justice and rushing towards a Kpandai by‑election while the legality of the underlying removals and annulments remains sub judice.
In a region where ECOWAS has declared a democratic emergency, this opinion insists that Ghana must choose fidelity to the Constitution over expediency, warning that no democracy can endure when political power is allowed to move faster than the law.
Relevant facts and context
On 24 November 2025, the High Court in Tamale annulled the 7 December 2024 parliamentary election in Kpandai and ordered a rerun, treating the seat as vacant notwithstanding the sitting MP’s challenge to jurisdiction and timeliness.
The MP has since invoked the supervisory and appellate jurisdiction of the higher courts, seeking to overturn both the annulment and its consequential orders.
Despite these pending processes, Parliament has notified the electoral authorities of a vacancy in Kpandai and triggered preparations for a by‑election, acting as though the seat were definitively empty while the legal foundation of that “vacancy” is being actively contested.
The unacceptable result is that the sovereign will of the people of Kpandai is being suspended not by a final judicial pronouncement, but by a first‑instance ruling whose correctness remains under serious and ongoing review.
On the judicial front, Chief Justice Gertrude Araba Torkornoo was controversially suspended under Article 146 and later purportedly removed from office, even as she mounted legal challenges to the process by which she was hounded out.
In parallel, Justice Paul Baffoe‑Bonnie was moved from acting Chief Justice to being firmly entrenched as Chief Justice, notwithstanding multiple pending actions contesting the validity of her removal and the legitimacy of the succession process. Those challenges remain live, yet the institutional order has proceeded as though there were no question about the existence of a vacancy in that high office.
In earlier dissenting opinions, I criticised the lack of Executive, Legislative, and Judicial wisdom in replacing a Chief Justice while she was still in court fighting to vindicate her right to her office. The warning then was that a constitutional democracy cannot treat a contested removal as final without emptying the right of appeal of all practical meaning and inviting institutional chaos masquerading as “certainty”.
That warning has not only been ignored; it has been normalised and exported into other contexts, with Kpandai now standing as the latest casualty.
The central constitutional question
In this matter, there is only one question that truly matters: can constitutional actors be permitted to behave as if a vacancy exists when the very existence of that vacancy is under active judicial contestation?
The answer, rooted in both reason and the Constitution, must be an unambiguous no.
A state that claims fidelity to the rule of law cannot at once proclaim the right of appeal and yet conduct itself as though appeals are a mere nuisance to be outpaced by political speed.
Hypocrisy of selective restraint
This is where the hypocrisy becomes unforgivable.
Many of the very voices that today cloak themselves in the language of restraint—insisting that the electoral authorities must await the exhaustion of appellate processes in Kpandai—were yesterday on the rooftops defending the indecent haste to replace Chief Justice Torkornoo while her own challenges were actively before the courts.
When it was the Head of the Judiciary whose rights and office were at stake, they found nothing wrong with proceeding at breakneck speed to entrench a successor, dismissing concerns about pending suits as obstructionist, emotional, or politically motivated.
Now that it is a parliamentary seat in Kpandai, some of these same actors suddenly rediscover the virtues of caution, the sanctity of appeals, and the need to await final judicial pronouncements.
They speak the language of prudence today that they derided as timidity yesterday. This is not evolution; it is opportunism.
It is constitutional principle treated as a costume—worn when convenient, discarded when it obstructs desired outcomes.
Those who behave this way do not only undermine consistency; they corrode public faith in the sincerity of every appeal to the Constitution.
The Kpandai mirror of constitutional error
The same constitutional absurdity that afflicted the Chief Justice’s removal now manifests in Kpandai.
A High Court judgment—subject to appeal and already under direct legal attack—has been treated by Parliament and the electoral authorities as if it created an incontrovertible vacancy in a seat that the people of Kpandai filled at the ballot box last December.
The sovereign will expressed through that election is being set aside not by a final judicial determination but by a provisional decision whose jurisdiction, reasoning, and consequences remain under active judicial review.
When Parliament rushes to declare a vacancy and the electoral authorities prepare a by‑election while appeals and review applications are pending, the right of appeal is reduced to a procedural ornament, and the good people of Kpandai are told, in effect, that their mandate can be suspended by judicial and political haste rather than by settled law.
The courts, by allowing or tolerating such steps while meaningful relief remains possible, lend their silence—or worse, their tacit endorsement—to this constitutional indecency
Vacancies, appeals, and constitutional fidelity
The principle tutored here is not complex. Vacancies are not conjectures; they are legal facts.
A supposed vacancy that is the subject of an active appeal or judicial review is, by definition, unsettled.
To move to fill such a “vacancy” is to prejudge the outcome of the appellate process and to convert the right of appeal into a hollow ritual that cannot prevent the very harm it was designed to forestall.
Indeed, the indecent haste to enforce a first‑instance decision while an appeal is pending can be likened—admittedly in stark and extreme terms—to administering a lethal injection to a convicted person immediately after a trial court has imposed the death penalty, without waiting for the appeal he has lawfully mounted to be heard and determined.
The question is: how do you bring him back to life after his appeal succeeds?
The analogy may appear disproportionate, but the constitutional message it carries is unmistakable: our leaders and institutions must stop treating as finally settled those grave matters which have not yet received final judicial determination.
To act otherwise is to render the appellate process a cruel formality and to gamble recklessly with rights that the Constitution has placed beyond the reach of haste.
When the courts permit this, they abdicate their role as guardians of legality and turn adjudication into a slow‑motion commentary on faits accomplis.
When Parliament proceeds on this basis, it abandons constitutional prudence and becomes an agent of constitutional risk rather than restraint.
When the President or the Executive encourages or exploits it, they weaponise institutional haste against constitutional guarantees, preferring speed over legality and entrenchment over justice.
A democracy under regional emergency
All this unfolds in a West African region now openly described as being in a state of democratic and security emergency, driven by repeated coups, attempted coups, and mounting electoral tensions.
Regional leaders – ECOWAS – have warned that contested elections, disregard for constitutional norms, and the erosion of judicial credibility are key triggers of instability and a direct threat to the survival of democratic governance in the sub‑region.
If Ghana, long held out as a democratic example, chooses to trivialise appeals, brazenly manipulate vacancies, and normalise constitutional recklessness, it not only weakens its own institutions; it also adds fuel to a regional crisis that others are struggling to contain.
In such an environment, greater fidelity to the Constitution is not a luxury; it is an existential necessity for the Republic and for the stability of West Africa.
Conclusion
A constitutional democracy must choose. Either the right of appeal is real, with practical consequences that bind all branches of government, or it is a decorative promise that can be outpaced by tactical speed and institutional collusion.
If appeals are genuine, then no branch of government may properly act as though a vacancy is concluded while the existence of that vacancy is being lawfully contested—whether in the office of the Chief Justice or in the parliamentary seat of Kpandai.
If, on the other hand, political actors are free to entrench successors and call by‑elections while challenges remain alive, then the Constitution has been reduced to a suggestion and the citizen’s right to be heard to a charade.
In a region where democratic order trembles, Ghana cannot afford to play games with legality.
With great respect, this recklessness must stop.
The courts must insist that where the existence of a vacancy is under active challenge, all consequential actions to fill that vacancy be stayed.
Parliament must cease declaring seats empty on the strength of decisions that are not yet final, and the President must stop treating pending litigation as an inconvenience to be rendered moot by speed.
The electoral authorities must refuse to be conscripted into executing a constitutional wrong simply because other institutions are prepared to look away.
If this Republic wishes not only to call itself a democracy but to remain one in truth, it must choose the slow discipline of the Constitution over the quick thrill of expediency.
The central message in this opinion is this: no democracy can long endure where power is faster than the law, and no plea for restraint can be trusted when it comes from those who cheered indecent haste only yesterday.
On the basis of the foregoing, and in keeping with the spirit and letter of our Constitution, I dissent.
By Richard Dela Sky
-rD.s
