A law professor, Kweku Asare, has questioned the composition of the General Legal Council of Ghana, describing it as problematic, particularly in the way it has decided to handle issues pertaining to the Ghana School of Law admissions.
The law professor, who is also a Fellow in Public Law and Justice at the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD), made this known while reacting to the directive by the GLC to students applying for studies at the Ghana School of Law.
According to an undertaking issued by the school, all students would not have the opportunity to request remarking of their scripts or even get to see their scripts after they are marked.
According to Prof. Kweku Asare, this is unconstitutional, and the GLC has proven that it does not respect the laws of the country by its actions in this matter.
“In the case of the GLC, the undertaking that they asked students to sign before taking their exams, which is to the effect that once you take the exam, you cannot look at your script, you cannot review it, you cannot ask for a regrade, you know, a court of law – a duly constituted court of law has declared that unfair, unreasonable and unconstitutional. That was in 2020.
“The court also gave the General Legal Council 14 days to come out with guidelines that would facilitate and give a roadmap to students so that if they feel aggrieved by their scores or by the process, they can review, they can regrade and they can look at their scripts.
“Two years after, the General Legal Council has failed to provide that guideline, in contempt of the court order and they are continuing with the policy that has been declared unfair, unreasonable and unconstitutional,” he said.
Speaking on the Wednesday, August 3, 2022, edition of Good Morning Ghana on Metro TV and monitored by GhanaWeb, Prof. Asare explained further that this situation is very problematic and is comparable to coups perpetuated by soldiers.
“If soldiers did this, we’ll call it a coup, but if the General Legal Council does it, we just sit there and then say let’s talk and so on,” he added.
As a measure to curb this, the law professor called on the students who will be writing the next entrance exams for the Ghana School of Law in September to boycott it entirely.
“It is time for positive action and I’ve applied three things that should be done immediately. Number one, the students should boycott the exams that is scheduled for September… if we analogize the situation to the medical field, the GLC has become almost like a physician who administers poison to the patient,” he stated.
He stressed that this attitude of the GLC should not be encouraged because it amounts to a complete abuse of power.
Prof. Kweku Asare insists that some positive action should be taken to stop the GLC from continuing to disrespect the laws of Ghana.
“There are a couple of things that Ghanaians have come to accept. One of them is, when it rains, it floods. The other one is after harvesting, there is post-harvest losses. And the third one is the depreciation of the cedi. Unfortunately, we are adding to this set of anomalous things that we have accepted, and the GLC abuse of students, abuse of power, dishonour of the law, disregard of the constitution has become one of those things that we seem to have accepted.
“And we have spoken at length to these issues: it is time for some positive action. These positive actions is going to be grounded on several things, but the most important for that positive action is the constitution itself. Because, when you read articles 3 and 4 of the constitution, it gives us the right and the duty to defend the constitution. And most people think that that right and duty kicks in only when soldiers overthrow the constitution.
“No, it kicks in even before that because the modern way of undermining democracy is when administrative officials, administrative bodies, elected officials eat at the constitution, subvert the constitution. And when they do that, as the General Legal Council is doing, then you have a right, a duty, to use any means to defend ourselves,” he added.
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Prof. Kweku Asare is worried about the composition of the GLC