My allegiance is with the bench not a political party-SC nominee Yao Gaewo

Justice Ernest Yao Gaewu, who was the New Patriotic Party’s Ho Central and Ho West parliamentary candidates in the 2012 and 2016 general elections, respectively, has informed parliament’s Appointments Committee that he has resigned from the party and his allegiance is with the bench.

Justice Ernest Yao Gaewu has been nominated by President Nana Akufo-Addo to the Supreme Court.

During his interview with the committee on Wednesday, October 19, 2022, Justice Gaewu disclosed that he left the NPP in 2020.

Even if he finds himself presiding over a dispute between the two major parties, the NPP and the NDC, Justice Gaewu assured the committee that he would uphold the law fairly in his capacity as a judge.

The former candidate for the legislature convinced the committee that his allegiance was now to the bench and not to a political party.

On September 16, 2020, in the Jubilee House, President Akufo-Addo administered the oath of office to about 16 new Justices of the High Court.

Prior to being appointed, Mr. Gaewu served as the managing partner of Mawulorm Chambers, a renowned law company in the capital of the Volta Regional that Justice Jones Victor Mawulorm Dotse, a Supreme Court Judge, founded when he was actively practicing law.

After being admitted to the bar in 2000, the former secretary of the Volta bar—the Ghana Bar Association’s regional branch—started his legal career in Ho under the guidance of Justice Dotse.

A day before his vetting, Mr. Haruna Iddrisu, the leader of the minority caucus in parliament and a member of the committee, had reservations about the number of judges President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo had named to the Supreme Court.

In his opening remarks at the meeting of the committee to vet the four nominees, Justice Barbara Frances Ackah-Yensu, Justice George Kingsley Koomson, Justice Kwame Adibu Asiedu, Justice of the Court of Appeal, and Justice Ernest Yao Gaewu, Justice of the High Court, Mr. Iddrisu expressed his concern.

Source: Ghanatodayonline.com