Private legal practitioner and former Member of Parliament (MP) for Zebilla, John Ndebugre has advised Auditor-General, Daniel Yao Domelovo to take his grievances against President Akufo Addo’s order to make him go on leave to court.
According to John Ndebugre, even though the president is vested with the power to direct an appointee to go on leave if he hasn’t done so, Mr Domelovo has a point against the way he was asked to proceed on leave.
He told Citi FM’s Eyewitness News, “there is a point there about the President overdoing things and making those directives; maybe he [Akufo-Addo] should have gone to court to get a court order to compel him [Domelovo] to go on leave, but the President is short-circuited. And so, the solution for Mr. Domelovo is also to go to court and challenge the President’s rights to order him to go on accumulated leave.”
He opined that the Auditor General may not be allowed to return to work after his mandatory leave if he fails to go to court.
“This is a matter of procedure. If you go to court, let’s say the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court declares that the President’s order was void, it will be void. I don’t think the way he is proceeding will help him because what he is implying to do is he is going to go on this 2020 leave, exhaust it and attempt to come back to the office; and he would be debarred… he will not be allowed to enter the office. So, his solution is to go to the court and challenge the procedure the President has adopted,” he noted.
Daniel Domelovo in his response to the presidential directive to go on leave said that tenets of the country’s law flaw the president’s directive.
However, Mr Ndebugre explained that the president didn’t err with his directive, but he could have rather used an alternate approach.
I agreed that because it is an independent office [Auditor General office], maybe the President ought not to by Executive Fiat order him to go on leave. He should have gone to court for a court order and tell him [Domelovo] to go on leave. And if he [Akufo-Addo] went, he would be able to secure that order because every worker is supposed to go on leave every year,” he stated.
Source: TheBBCghana.Com
