The Supreme Court Must Expedite Justice

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

"Time" has been said to dull and/or deaden raw nerves and wounded memories; but in the case of the massive and criminal rigging of Ghana's 2012 presidential election in favor of Mr. John Dramani Mahama, the passage of time appears to further galvanize the resolve of democracy-loving Ghanaians to ensure that the real winner of Election 2012 is acceded power in as timely a manner as is judicially practicable.

This clearly appears to be what Prof. Mike Oquaye means when the former Deputy Speaker of Ghana's Parliament poignantly observes that the eligible "majority of Ghanaian voters voted for Nana Akufo-Addo to become their president and not the current leader" (See "Ghana Is Being Led by a 'Loser' - Prof. Mike Oquaye" Peacefmonline.com 1/28/13).

Matters are also not the least bit meliorated by the injudicious decision of Mr. Mahama to play obsolescent left-wing politics with the otherwise salubrious fortunes and destiny of the country by moving dangerously close to the medieval theocracy of Iran. We shall take up this latter theme in a near-future discourse. Suffice it herein, however, to emphatically observe that Mr. Mahama's official claim to Christian suasion may decidedly be a mere strategic political gimmick or facade opportunistically assumed to hoodwink the country's predominantly Christian majority into affording him the presidency on the cheap.

At heart, the man is incurably a Muslim radical of Taliban breed, even as his own father had been a bona fide Muslim and both sides of Mr. Mahama's family are also widely known to be practising Muslims. The preceding, of course, is in no way to insist that there aren't moderate and levelheaded Muslim leaders in Ghana who deeply appreciate the imperative need to privilege the superior claims and interests of the nation over and above the capricious adventurism of any individual citizen, irrespective of sociopolitical status. We shall in due course follow the shady trail of the 1.5 ton-gold question and the latter's alleged linkage to Iran, Mr. Mahama's own reported visit to Turkey and the dire implications that these have for Ghana's image abroad, and the attendant deliberate economic and criminal privation of the country's wealth from its rightful owners.

Needless to say, Ghana's 1992 Constitution may say whatever it has to say about the protected privilege of deliberate political criminality on the part of a transitional presidential incumbent, but the ultimate arbiter of culpable political criminality inheres in the people themselves, their elected representatives and the judiciary. And we intend to make unconscionably errant leaders pay dearly for crimes - both economic and non-economic - cavalierly committed against the greater interests of the country and its citizens.

We also fervidly urge the "Let My Vote Count" campaign leaders to keep the volcanic flames of justice incessantly stoked till the country's august Supreme Court delivers its verdict on Election 2012. As Prof. Oquaye aptly observed the other day, "The Supreme Court needs to hear from all of us citizens who want answers. If the NDC wants to go to court thinking that they can explain why 600,000 more votes [or over-voting, to be precise] or 400,000 votes with no verification, both of which are against the law, let them try."

That the Supreme Court has the "Supreme Burden" of putting a definitive stop to the sort of fetid electoral farce that has been passing for free and fair elections since 1992 cannot be gainsaid. Indeed, the decision itself may not come that easily for the venerable and erudite membership of the Court, in view of the palpably tense climate induced by the Afari-Gyan-led Electoral Commission's ill-fated decision to play fast-and-loose with the sacred mandate of the Ghanaian electorate and, worse yet, the 1992 Fourth-Republican Constitution of Ghana.

Still, if the right decision is delivered, and there is absolutely no reason not to believe that it would, it would definitely set Ghana's judicial system emulatively and widely apart from its counterparts in both the West African sub-region and the African continent at large, the way it ought to be.

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
Feb. 9, 2013
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