Wontumi’s sentence is selective justice, veil piercing and miscarriage of justice – Minority

The Minority in Parliament has identified four defects in the conviction of the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party, Mr. Bernard Antwi-Boasiako, popularly known as Chairman Wontumi.

At a press conference in Parliament on Tuesday, July 21, 2026, the Caucus said the judgment by Justice Kocuvie-Tay reflects a “miscarriage of justice correctable on appeal”.

According to the Minority, the first of the defects, they say is the denial of counsel of choice.

The Caucus argued that the court delivered judgment despite the absence of Chairman Wontumi’s lead counsel who had notified the court of a prior professional engagement abroad.

They explained that article 19 of the Constitution guarantees every accused person a lawyer of their own choosing, and that guarantee may only be displaced in the most exceptional circumstances.

The Minority cited the case of Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata who was sentenced without the presence of his lawyer but was later acquitted in 2016 by the Court of Appeal with the court condemning the trial and describing it as a miscarriage of justice.

“If that standard mattered in 2016, it matters today, regardless of whose name sits on the charge sheet,” the Minority stated demanding that same verdict must apply in Wontumi’s case.

They also say the refusal of the High Court to refer “serious constitutional questions to the Supreme Court” amounts to a defect in the judgement.

“Article 130 reserves constitutional interpretation for our highest court alone. Instead, the trial judge decided for herself that Section 99(2)(b) of the Minerals and Mining Act was, in her own words, clear and unambiguous.

“Our own Supreme Court has already condemned exactly this manoeuvre,” the statement noted.

The Minority’s third argument is that the court pierced Akonta Mining Limited’s corporate veil to convict Chairman Wontumi personally.

They argued that a company is a person in its own right, separate from its shareholders and directors, hence it was “unnecessary” for the “court to convict Wontumi and the company separately, on separate counts, using reasoning that treats them as one and the same.”

“A court cannot dissolve a company to convict the man, and then reassemble it, fully intact, to convict the company too. And all of it was unnecessary,” the Minority explained.

To the Minority, the conviction of Wontumi is only a selective justice. They questioned why there is no update on charges or trial dates against NDC’s National Organiser, Joseph Yamin, and its Vice Chairman, Yakubu Abanga, over allegations of illegal mining when the Attorney-General has directed an investigation into the matter.

they also raise concerns over the bail granted to an NDC Member of Parliament charged over an anti-galamsey clash.

“This pattern, taken together, sustains a reasonable perception that the machinery of the State moves fastest, and lands hardest, when it is pointed at the political opposition,” they stressed.

They called on the Attorney-General to publish the State’s enforcement record on illegal mining across the political spectrum.

“We call on the Court of Appeal to scrutinise the denial of counsel, the refusal to refer, and the veil-piercing, with equal and unflinching rigour,” the Minority stated.

The Caucus clarified that their demands is not an attack on the Judiciary as an institution, rather a call for consistency, for constitutional fidelity, for a justice system that inspires confidence across the political divide, and not merely within it.