'You owe it a duty to deliver impartial justice’ – Mahama to Judiciary

Former President John Mahama has said “a judiciary owes it a duty to deliver impartial justice to the people”. Speaking as a special guest at the Liberty Convocation, the former Ghanaian leader said: “An Ombudsman owes a duty of care to the people to investigate all issues of malfeasance; a police force should exist to serve the people and not rein terror on them; an electoral commission owes a sacred duty of care to the people by ensuring that they are included in the electoral process and not excluded in the interest of the incumbent administration; an independent media owes it to the people to not only report facts without bias, but to hold the government of the day accountable.” Mr Mahama has, on several occasions, taken issue with Ghana’s judiciary. A few weeks ago, he said the image of Ghana’s judiciary is “broken” under the leadership of Justice Anin-Yeboah and hoped a “new Chief Justice” leads an image-cleansing crusade in the future, since, in his view, the current Chief Justice cannot lead such a process. Addressing a conference of lawyers of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) on Sunday, 28 August 2022, Mr Mahama bewailed that the judiciary has now become the butt of jokes, as a result of its biased rulings and decisions on cases with a political tinge. “Recently”, he noted, “so badly has the image of our judiciary deteriorated that many of our citizenry openly make a mockery of our justice system and of our justices”. “The phrase, ‘Go to court’ is, these days, is met with derisive laughter, instead of hope that one will truly get justice if he went to the court”, Mr Mahama explained. He said: “If people are not poking fun about politics and inducements being used to sway the hand of justice in the lower courts, then it is poking fun and making statements about the 7-0 of the ‘Unanimous FC’ verdicts, which, mostly, involve cases of a political nature in our Supreme Court”. “This is an unfortunate development”, he regretted, pointing out: “One of the scariest existential threats to any democracy is when citizens think their judiciary holds no value for them” or is of “no use to them, and this is the security threat that the national security apparatus tried to draw the attention of the nation to, recently but was poorly received by the President and his party”. “It is scary because it threatens the peace and stability of our democracy and we must quickly correct this fast-spreading notion”, warned Mr Mahama. He said it is a harbinger of danger. “If care is not taken, we’ll get to a stage where people will have no qualms about taking the law into their own hands because they do not have the confidence that they can get any justice from the system”, he cautioned. “There’s, therefore, the urgent need for the Ghanaian judiciary, to work to win the trust and confidence of the citizenry and erase the widely-held perception of hostility and political bias in legal proceedings at the highest court of the land”, he urged. “Unfortunately”, Mr Mahama noted, “we have no hope that the current leadership of our Judiciary can lead such a process of change”. “We can only hope that a new Chief Justice will lead the process to repair the broken image that our judiciary has acquired over the last few years”, he said. In March this year, too, Mr Mahama had cause to express reservations about the judiciary thus: “We do have problems with the judiciary, I must say”, adding: “I think that it is necessary for some internal reforms to take place there”. “It is necessary for the Chief Justice or whoever is responsible, to make some reforms”, Mr Mahama said when he addressed the US Chapter of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) at Bentley University over the weekend. Bemoaning how, in his view, “most of the governance institutions have been politicised”, Mr Mahama said: “I give the example of the Judiciary – It is only in Ghana that a Supreme Court will make a decision that a birth certificate is not proof of citizenship”. “There are many such funny judgments that have been given”, he added. “I remember at one time, our colleague, Professor Raymond Atuguba, said that from research he had done, judges turn to give their judgments in favour of the political party or leader that appointed them”. “He was subjected to such a whirlwind of indignation by the judiciary but if you bring it down to what is happening today, and you look at it and see who appointed who, you will find that there was some truth in the research.” “The thing is, our Constitution gives the security of tenure to judges. Once you have been appointed, you cannot be removed”. “That is why we give security of tenure so that you will have the courage, no matter who appointed you, to give judgment according to your conscience. That is what our judges should do. They must rise to the occasion”, urged Mr Mahama.