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Lusa - Business News - Sao Tome: New Constitutional Court judges take seats after predecessors ousted

Sao Tome, Aug.13,2019 (Lusa)–Three new judges are to take up their seats on Sao Tome and Principe’s Constitutional Court on Tuesday, after their election by parliament on Monday following the removal of their predecessors as the result of disciplinary proceedings.
Jesuley Patrik Lopes, Edite Tem Jua and Hilário Garrido are the new judges, elected with the votes of 29 deputies in favour, 25 against and one abstention.
They replace Carlos Olímpio Stock, Leopoldo Machado Marques and António Reffel Raposo, who were dismissed last week in the wake of disciplinary proceedings taken by the Superior Council of Judicial Magistrates (CSMJ), the body that appoints and disciplines Sao Tome judges.
The leader of the Independent Democratic Action (ADI) party, Abnildo de Oliveira, lamented the fact that "an institution such as this [the Court] can keep being shaken up, with it every three, six or nine months to have to change its member judges only because their decisions are not in line with our [the parliamentary majority’s] interests." He said that Sao Tome was “once again taking steps backwards” and that the ADI "cannot agree with this farce".
His fellow ADI deputy José António agreed that "the whole process is flawed and embarrasses the country."
Sao Tome’s parliament is made up of 28 members of the so-called 'new majority' – the MLSTP-PSD and PCD-UDD-MDFM coalition, which provides support for the government headed by Jorge Bom Jesus - while the ADI, which was previously in power, has 25 deputies. In last October’s legislative elections, two independent deputies were also elected in Caué district.
At the beginning of August, the Superior Council of Judicial Magistrates recommended the dismissal of the three Constitutional Court judges, accusing them of "lack of honesty and serious insubordination, immoral and harmful conduct and a permanent inability to adapt the requirements of their position." It proposed that they lose all status and rights as judges.
On 23 May, the three judges had approved a ruling that restored the brewer Rosema to the Sao Tome brothers António and Domingos Monteiro, 15 days after a lower court handed ownership of the factory to Angolan entrepreneur Mello Xavier. The two sides have been wrangling in the courts over ownership of the company for more than nine years.
The CSMJ suspended the three judges as a precautionary measure and a few days later parliament approved a resolution authorising the CSMJ to start disciplinary proceedings against them, which culminated in their dismissal.
The minister of justice, Ivete Lima, prevented the judges’ ruling on Rosema from being implemented by ordering that it be shelved.
The controversial judges were in the meantime received by the country’s president, Evaristo Carvalho, and afterwards told reporters that they were being persecuted.
"For some time now we have been persecuted out of hatred and injustice perpetrated by the judges … of the Supreme Court of Justice and the members of the Superior Council … and the president of the Constitutional Court," said Marques.

MYB/ARO // ARO.
Lusa

Agency : LUSA
Date : 2019-08-14 09:41:00

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