Justice Srem-Sai, Senior Lecturer at the GIMPA Law Faculty, has voiced concerns over President Akufo-Addo’s handling of the Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill, commonly known as the anti-LGBTQ+ bill.
Srem-Sai asserts that the President’s decision to defer assent to the bill violates constitutional principles.
President Akufo-Addo, in a recent engagement with members of the Diplomatic Corps, stated that he would await the Supreme Court’s ruling on the bill before deciding whether to assent to it or not.
Justice Srem-Sai says the Constitution does not grant the President the authority to exercise discretion regarding the timing of assenting to a bill.
He highlights specific timelines outlined in the Constitution, stating that within seven days of receiving a bill from the Speaker of Parliament, the President must indicate whether he intends to veto it.
“Within the first seven days after the president has received the bill from the Speaker of Parliament, he is bound to indicate whether he wants to veto the bill to the Speaker. Then, after another fourteen days, he is required to give his reservations about some of the provisions and why he wants to veto the bill, and that must be forwarded to the Speaker. The law also makes provisions for the bill to be sent to the Council of State, and in all these timelines, there is no space for the president to use his discretion to say that he is waiting for something else to happen before he vetoes the bill.”
“So our point is that the president’s desire will basically be violating provisions of the constitution because the constitution gives him no power as to when he is supposed to act on a bill.”
