MUSIGA Ordered To File Defence

By William Yaw Owusu

Wednesday, 28 November 2007
AN Accra Fast Track High Court yesterday refused to set aside a writ of summons filed by Gyedu Blay Ambolley, a musician, who wants an order of interim injunction on the recent elections held by the Musicians Union of Ghana (MUSIGA).

Instead, the court, presided over by Justice Victor Ofoe, asked MUSIGA to file their defence for the court to determine whether or not Mr Ambolley has the capacity to sue the union.

Initially, Mr Am-bolley filed an exparte motion for injunction but the court said it could not grant his claims because the nature of his application demanded that MUSIGA was served on notice for it to contest those claims.

He repeated the application on notice and prayed the court to, among other things, declare that the vetting committee, set up by the union was unconstitutional and another declaration that he was eligible to stand for position of president of the union

Mr Ambolley claimed that by virtue of article 8(3) of the union’s constitution, any member in good standing could contest for a position, adding that on October 4, he filed his nomination to contest for the position of president but was prevented by the vetting committee from contesting.

When MUSIGA was served with Ambolley’s processes to appear before the court, it came to contest that the plaintiff did not follow due procedure in filing the application and that he had no capacity to institute the application in the first place.

Moving the motion to set aside Ambolley application for interim injunction, Mr Adjabeng Akrasi, counsel for MUSIGA said "the plaintiff’s address is defective and the mode of service of all the named processes constitute a fundamental breach."

He said: "Mr Am-bolley is not known to the union, to the extent that he is not of good standing, not having paid any dues or at all, for a considerable number of years."

Reacting, Mr Akoto Bamfo, counsel for Ambolley said the union had correspondence with his client through the address used in filing the application and he wondered why MUSIGA could argue that the address is incomplete and insufficient.

He said the issue raised by Ambolley could not be resolved by affidavit evidence adding, "We ought to lead evidence through a trial to resolve the issue".

Mr Akrasi however cut in to say that when filing the application Mr Ambolley had the responsibility to satisfy the court that he had capacity to sue the union. He said MUSIGA was permitted under the law to raise this issue at any stage of the trial.

Justice Ofoe ruled, "MUSIGA should file its defence for the matter to be looked into. As for the issue of address it can easily be taken care of by Order 80 of the High Court rules."

On October 22, Ambolley submitted himself before the union’s vetting committee for the position of president but said he later realised that the union was wrong in forming the vetting committee.

He subsequently wrote to the committee on October 30 to announce his decision not to submit himself for vetting but the committee ignored it but went ahead on November 2, to disqualify him from contesting for the position of president.

On November 14, the union held its annual congress in Sunyani and elected unopposed Mrs Diana Hopson as the new MUSIGA president .