Atta Akyea Locks Up CJ

*Between her party loyalty and judicial neutrality as A-G hooks back Mpiani & Tarzan back to the docks*

The Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Mrs. Betty Mould Iddrisu, last Friday filed an appeal seeking to overturn the High Court ruling that freed the two principal organizers of Ghana’s 50th Independence Anniversary Celebrations and saddled the country with huge debt.

But with revelations by the NPP Member of Parliament for Abuakwa South, Samuel Atta Akyea that her sister in-law, Chief Justice Georgina Wood, coached him on how to torpedo the declaration of the 2008 presidential results in favour of the NPP, the case is billed to be a test case for the judiciary, particularly for the CJ, who has been locked up between loyalty to the NPP and her judicial neutrality by the revelations.

The Attorney-General is questioning the decision of an Accra Fast Track High Court to discharge Mr. Charles Wereko Brobby, former Chief Executive of Ghana @ 50 Secretariat and Mr. Kwadwo Mpiani, former Chief of staff and Chairman of the Planning Committee of Ghana @50.

About two weeks ago, the Fast Track High Court presided over by Justice Marful-Sau, an Appeal Court Judge, discharged the two men on charges of causing financial loss to the state, and argued that the trial is a violation of the accused persons’ right to appeal against the findings of the Ghana @50 Commission of Enquiry at the Court of Appeal.

With the Attorney-General filing the appeal at the Appeals Court, all eyes are on the Chief Justice regarding her choice of judges to sit on the case and make pronouncement.

Ghanaians will focus attention on how and who she will task with hearing the case in view of the uproar that the discharge of the two men generated.

At her disposal to pick from are Justices Henrietta Abban, Justice S.K. Kanyoke, and Justice K.A. Acquaye but she runs the risk of having somebody predicting and winning the direction of their decision. Also before the CJ are Justices Yaw Appau, Quaye, Ofoe, Addo who are difficult to predict.

Or having Mrs. Justice Agnes Mercy Abla Dordzie, Mr. Justice Senyo Dzamefe and Mrs. Dennis Dominic Adjei who were newly-promoted to the Court of Appeal, to have a taste of a high-profile case like this one. Justice Marful-Sau and Isaac Douse who are also on the Court of Appeal bench, are already barred from sitting on the case having had something to do with the case already.

Many Ghanaians condemned the decision of the Fast Track High Court Judge as biased, anti-government and politically motivated while others, mostly members of the opposition NPP, argued that the ruling is a testimony for the rule of law and insisted that the attacks on the judiciary were unjustified.

An Accra-based newspaper, The Enquirer, last Friday quoted from a secret tape recording involving lawyer Atta Akyea, who is married to the CJ’s sister, revealing that during the December 2008 elections, when he (Atta Akyea) filed an Ex-Parte motion to stop the Electoral Commissioner (EC) from declaring the results, the CJ, after convening the court on New Year’s Day, a national holiday, coached him about how to go about the case.

The recording reveals that when the case was allocated to one Justice Asante, the NPP, who feared the judge was pro-NDC, apparently approached the CJ, who coached him on how to get the docket snatched from the said judge, with claims that he once worked with CASHPRO, a company that dealt in cocoa and which had NDC stalwarts, including Ato Ahwoi, as owners.

The secret audio captured the NPP MP saying that in the room where he filed the case, “When I was going, they said the CJ said I should raise the issue of bias, (against the judge). All that she (CJ) would have told the young man (the judge) is that they say you have worked with CASHPRO and CASHPRO is NDC, and I don’t want you to be embarrassed.”

Mr. Atta Akyea, continued in the secret recording that “when I was about to go to court, they said that my wife wants to talk to me, and she said they say I should move the motion, it’ll be alright.”

Mr. Atta Akyea is married to a sister of the CJ.

Other pro -NPP lawyers who were captured by the secret recording were also heard saying that “(Justice) Asante has no Charisma; if it was Ofori Atta, he would have granted the Ex-Parte. We put the ex-parte before a wrong judge, we thought he was actually for us; listening to the decision and ruling, he is not” with us.

“You may be surprised that he may have hinted those people,” referring to Tony Lithur, Fui Tsikata, Bram Larbi and Samuel Cudjoe (a.k.a. Tom Sawyer) among other lawyers, who had rushed to court as ‘Friends of the Court’, to scatter the diabolic plan to halt the Tain election, which would obviously have led to a constitutional crisis during the 2008 elections.

With the foregoing, legal analysts are suggesting that Georgina Wood takes a back seat, and allow her next in-command, Justice William Atuguba, to decide on the judges to hear the appeal as politics is bound to be read into her decision.