What are The Eleven (11) Meanings of what the Supreme Court said in the Abu Ramadan Case last week? - What are The Eleven (11) Meanings of what the Supreme Court said in the Abu Ramadan Case last week?

I intend to briefly expatiate on each of the 11 points listed above in the order in which I have listed them.

1. First, the Supreme Court ignored the incompetence of the application brought by the Plaintiffs and proceeded to take on the case, as it is entitled to do. Nowhere in the application brought by the plaintiffs did they identify any portion of the judgment of the 5th of May that was unclear. All they did was to reargue their original case, urging the Supreme Court to grant them the reliefs previously dismissed by that Court and to grant them further reliefs. This conclusion is derived from the mouth of the Plaintiffs themselves. Plaintiffs' own affidavit in support of their motion says as follows: "27. That Applicants will contend, having been so advised by counsel, that the fact that this court dismissed Applicant’s reliefs 4(a) and (b) on their terms does not prevent or disable this court from making orders which may have the effect of the dismissed reliefs though upon different reasoning or upon different grounds." 

It is clear that the Plaintiffs wanted a variation of the order of the Supreme Court dismissing their reliefs in the original case. This means that the application before the Supreme Court was an application for Review of the earlier judgment, camouflaged as an application for Clarification. Similarly, as illustriously argued before the Supreme Court on Thursday by one of the best advocates in this Country, Thaddeus Sory, the aspects of the application seeking directions was similarly gravely faulty. 

Despite these errors, the Supreme Court, as it is entitled to do, took up the case and proceeded to deal with it. By doing so the Supreme Court has sent a clear message to the public and the Electoral Commission that electoral matters are so important that they will ignore even grave technical slips and do substantial justice in such cases. This is a positive message to send, and as citizens of this country, we should congratulate the Supreme Court for that. 

2. Secondly, and flowing from the above, the Supreme Court overlooked the essential character of the reliefs now sought by the plaintiffs and proceeded to issue fresh Orders not borne out by the application before it, as they are entitled to do. The plaintiffs went to the Supreme Court to seek clarification on the earlier judgment and for further directions, but the Supreme Court seems to have overlooked the central purpose of the application before it and appears to be more interested in enforcing their previous judgment. This is clear from their Order addressed to the EC to produce names of NHIS card registrants to the court by 29th June and their further Order that the EC should indicate how it intends to comply with the courts Orders as contained in its previous judgment. These fresh Orders are clearly not based on the application which was before the court.

Again, the Supreme Court has taken a position that no matter what you request from them in an election suit, they will issue Orders that will aid the electoral process and progress our democracy. So one may go to them seeking clarification, but in the abundance of their wisdom, they may decide to issue Orders, the better to protect the integrity of our electoral processes and our democracy. Again, the Supreme Court should be congratulated for exercising its discretion in this manner. 

3. Thirdly, and again flowing from the above, the Supreme Court has, AS OF TODAY, not granted the request of the Plaintiffs for a clarification of the judgment of the 5th of May. Though the Supreme Court may decide to do this at a later date as the case progresses, as of today, the Supreme Court has not clarified their previous judgment. Anyone claiming that the Supreme Court clarified their previous judgment by the Orders made last Thursday is gravely mistaken and pretty lost and should not be listened to.  

4. Fourthly, and for an undisclosed reason, the Supreme Court is more focused on NHIS card registrants than on dead persons, minors, and other “undesirable” names on the Register. In the Orders issued last Thursday, the Supreme Court requested the EC to produce the list of NHIS registrants in the Register. It is not clear why they did not request the EC to produce the names of persons who are dead or of minors, which categories are easily verifiable to some extent by the Births and Deaths Registry. If we consider that 100% of dead persons and 100% of minors who are on the Register are subject to deletion, it is surprising that the Supreme Court is not very interested in these categories. The Supreme Court, consistent with the posture of judicial activism and broad discretion they have assumed, could have requested the EC and/or the Births and Deaths Registry, to produce the names of dead persons and persons below 18 years of age to be removed from the Register. 

It seems the number of foreigners who registered with NHIS cards is less than 1% of all NHIS cardholders, yet the Supreme Court is more interested in this smaller figure, compared to the greater numbers in the other indicative categories. Related to this is the fact that the Supreme Court did not order the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) to produce the list of foreigners who have NHIS cards. This is a faster and more economical way of cleaning the Register than deleting all NHIS registrants and re-registering over 99% of them.  

For some reason, after showing judicial activism and extreme judicial liberalism by taking on an incompetent application, and by making orders not requested by the applicant, the Supreme Court failed to follow through by further requesting non parties to the suit, such as the Births and Death’s Registry and the NHIA, which both have electronic databases, to produce extracts from those databases for the purpose of cleaning the Register. We must strongly urge the Supreme Court to take its activism to its logical conclusion. 

5. Fifthly, the Supreme Court misunderstood the response of the Electoral Commission to the effect that they can identify NHIS registrants on the Register to mean the EC has, or can easily produce, a list of NHIS registrants. "I can identify them", is very, very, different from "I have the list". The two are miles apart. For example, if Ghana’s Missions abroad say they can identify all Ghanaians in the diaspora, this is very different from their capacity to produce a list of all Ghanaians in the Diaspora in 6 days.