Bar Association asserts gov’t treated CJ in unseemly manner

abdulai conteh

We do not normally hear from the Bar Association, but the retirement of Chief Justice Abdulai Conteh pulled the attorneys out of their lull.  The Bar on Tuesday night, passed a rare resolution chiding the government for the way it has treated the Chief Justice and by this afternoon, the government responded in kind.

But first, the background is that following a meeting with Prime Minister Dean Barrow  on June seventh, 2010, Conteh urgently convened back-to-back meetings with his judges and then with members of the Bar Executive. The CJ informed the Bar Executive that he would be demitting office in September, would not be hearing any new cases and would be transferring his part heard cases to other judges. Many lawyers, we are told, interpreted this as a sign that the Government was squeezing the CJ out.

But in a meeting held with the Bar Executive on June ninth 2010, the P.M. informed them that he had previously agreed with the Chief Justice a September deadline for departure, but could not agree to an extension as requested by the CJ to conclude all his cases.

All this prompted a meeting on Tuesday night, at which the usually timid and disunited Bar Association agreed on an unprecedented resolution chastising the Government of PM Barrow for the “unseemly” manner in which the Chief Justice’s tenure has been treated. According to the Bar resolution, it is of the firm view that the Chief Justice is entitled to continue in office with all the plentitude of the office without any interference from the executive until the office is demitted.

To ensure no further recurrence of such a standoff between the Executive and the Judiciary, the release called on the Government to allow the Bar Association to be consulted on appointments to the post of Chief Justice as well as to the Court of Appeal. This afternoon, we got a reaction from Senior Counsel Eamon Courtney on the state of affairs in the judiciary.

Eamon Courtenay, Member, Bar Association

eamon courtenay

“As you know in August he will reach his sixty0fifth birthday, and he is required to retire once he reaches that age. However, the constitution is section ninety-eight  sets out very clearly that even though a judge or a chief justice reaches a retirement age, he is allowed to continue serving as judge until he finishes all his work that he has currently on his court docket . It seems from public utterance and from the meetings at the Bar, executive has had that there is a fundamental difference between the government and the Chief Justice and that the government has set a deadline and said that whether or not you are finished, that you have to leave by  that time. On the other hand, the Chief Justice has said, in order to finish all my work, I need to go beyond that time; and it seems as we understand it that since the government has insisted that by the end of September the Chief Justice must go, that the Chief Justice has taken the decision that; well, I will stop doing everything I have, except writing judgments and assigning cases. That has caused quite a bit of dislocation and re-arranging of people’s cases and court calendars, it is a great inconvenience and so the Bar express its disapproval.”

It is not yet known who will succeed Doctor Conteh. Reports are however that both Justice Awich and Justice Muria are under consideration for the appointment. According to a well-placed source, both judges are over sixty-five years of age. We also told that Justice Oswell Legall got a three year extension to this contract earlier this year.