The Ghanaian Judiciary Under Attack!

PROPHETIC POLITICS

The Ghanaian Judiciary Under Attack!

One of the essential elements that hold societies together is a system of justice. Our great ancestor Noah, was instructed after the Flood that devastated his world, to institute Human Government (a justice system that could execute the death penalty for murderers). The giving of the Ten Commandments through Moses, offered a formalized Codified Legal framework. Many have pointed to the similarities in form between Hammurabi’s Code and Moses’ Decalogue. But the fact that we could even identify Codified Legal Regimes with antiquity; strengthens the notion that:”Society and Law are inseparable”. A society without law is primitive, brutish and chaotic.

The Ghanaian Judiciary has had her challenges throughout our fifty-year post-independence history. Generally our courts have ‘silently’ done their work, except when faced with ‘high-profile’ political cases. Kwame Nkrumah’s Presidency was confronted with the trial of the suspects of the Kulungugu Bomb Incident- one of the several attacks on the life of our first President.
Dr. Kofi Abrefa Busia was confronted with the Sallah case.
J.J. Rawlings’ share of the ‘disturbance’ of the Judiciary was the ‘murder of the three High Court Judges and the senior Military Officer’. Many saw this event as a move, not only to punish the judges for personal ‘unpalatable’ decisions at the courts; but to ‘intimidate’ the Judges into ‘staying away’ from the ‘holy and untouchable ways’ of the revolutionaries.
Some Judges, Magistrates, Tribunal Chairmen, and even the staff of the Judiciary; have been accused at different times of frustrating the wheels of justice through corruption, nepotism, ethnocentricism and all the wrong ‘isms’. On the whole however, we have not had a ‘bad’ Justice System over the years. So many Judges and Magistrates can be counted among the greatest sons and daughters of our nation. The Ghanaian Judiciary can be safely acknowledged as one of the Pillars of our country. Together with the Legislature, the Executive, and the Mass Media- the wheels of State have been kept running.

My dear friend, the Ghanaian Judiciary today is under unprecedented attacks from the ruling government and her supporters. The refrain from several officials of state, including the Attorney General is that: “The Judiciary has been compromised by the Kufour regime and that it must be purged by hook or crook”. No less a personality than the current Chairman of the NDC, Dr Kwabena Adjei blew the whistle for the commencement of hostilities. Almost every NDC official or government appointee has supported the assertion of their Chairman. One is left to believe that this was a carefully orchestrated plot by the ruling party and the government of the day.
If the Chairman blew the whistle; former President J.J. Rawlings is the ‘mid-field-dynamo’. He shouts, screams and threatens anytime he had the opportunity. In fact he claims his present difficulty with the current President is that: “Atta Mills has woefully failed to jail the NPP criminals”. His taunts and jeers are calculatedly to cow the judges.
A High Court Judge has had to ‘chicken out’ from sitting on a case because he was accused by no less a person than the Deputy Attorney General, Ebow Barton-Oduro, of making prejudicial statements about the case in Takoradi. As funny and hollow as this accusation was, the judge recused himself from the case. When the judge decided not to continue sitting on the case, the ruling government’s perspective was that: “Yes we are right- he is a corrupt judge- otherwise why has he stepped down?” This is the government of Ghana- they can get away with anything. They are always right.

The Chief Justice has especially borne the brunt of this very dangerous juxtaposition of the NDC government. They have insulted, assaulted, maligned, impugned her integrity, lied and unashamedly assailed her with every verbal, intellectual and emotional weapon that could be brandished against any person. The whole Chief Justice- the fourth on the hierarchy of the national positional ladder- has been literally reduced to nothing in the eyes of the ordinary citizens of this country. In the absence of the President, his Vice, the Speaker of the Parliament, the Chief Justice assumes the seat of the Presidency. In fact, she was the one who swore the President into office.
The NDC wants to hound her out of office, so that another takes up her position. They reason that since the President is supposed to appoint a new Chief Justice (if they succeeded to get Auntie Georgina out), he could then put a government favorite to replace her. And then hopefully, the NDC could have control over the courts.

Justice Georgina Theodora Woode has been working in the Judiciary since 1974. Throughout the nineteen-year reign of Rawlings, she was a Judge. Both the Judiciary system and the succeeding governments have had no difficulty with her long standing record as an astute Judge. She was raised to the position of the Chief Justice during the last year or so of Kufour’s reign; and all of a sudden- this otherwise ‘woman of integrity’ becomes a ‘criminal-anti-NDC-Judge’, who must be ‘destroyed’ at all cost. Where is truth? Where is fairness? Where is Justice? Where is integrity?

The excuses the NDC offer for their ‘demonic onslaught’ on this lady are so surprisingly laughable.

“She set up a court on a Sunday”. The particular case was an electoral one.
Fact- She has the legal support to do this. The bottom-line is that the presiding Judge ruled in favor of the NDC. What was then her crime?
Another one was that the Chief Justice presided over a Ministerial Committee set up to investigate a high profile Cocaine case. The NDC claims that because she did the ‘bidding’ of the Kufour-led government, she was rewarded with the Chef Justice position.
The fact is that the then Chief Justice, Acquah, had died. He had to be replaced. He could be replaced by anyone of the Supreme Court Judges- and she was one of them- and equally qualified as any other.
Another funny excuse is that she had bought a ‘Stolen State Land’. And because the current government is trying to retrieve the land; and she is the one who appoints judges to sit on cases in the courts; she as an interested party, cannot be a ‘judge in her own case’.
Fact is that Georgina Woode bought a government land at one part of the city (this is a general practice- that even the current President has benefited from). Kufour’s government decided to do something else with her original land and offered her the present one. She paid for it. What is her crime? And please remember Georgina is a Ga- and if even non-Ga government officials (with lesser pedigree) could purchase such lands- she is even more qualified to.
Another crime of hers is that her sister is married to an NPP lawyer and Parliamentarian- Ata Achea. Fact: Atta Achea’s marriage to her current wife predates any of them rising to their current positions. What has this got to do with the integrity of the Chief Justice? Atta Mills is married to Naadu Mills- anything wrong with this- especially if both of them happen to belong to the same profession or industry? Is something wrong here?
The NDC government’s real beef is that they are losing high profile cases (initiated by the government against NPP Ministers and appointees) in the courts. And it could be for no other reason than the courts being wired against them.
However, under the NPP regime, so many NDC officials also won their cases in the same courts. Nana Kunadu’s company- CARIDERM won a case against Kufour’s government that grossed the company $5 million.
Tsatsu Tsikata won and lost several mini-appeals during his six-year trial under Kufour. Interestingly, in spite of the accusations against the judges, several NDC operatives are suing people at the courts.
E. T. Mensah has sued some officials of the Civil Service for defamation.
Government officials like Tony Aidoo want everybody to know that they will resort to the courts to seek remedies for any harm aimed at him.
There is also the fact that currently some of the NPP functionaries have lost some of the legal arguments they have raised at some stages of their trials- presided over by the same judges.
You see that the name of President Mills is conspicuously out of the above discussion? The reason is that what he said about the issue amounted to ‘nothing’. On his return from a visit to the USA, all what he said was: “I uphold the independence of the judiciary”. Please note that he is not only the President, but also the Leader of the NDC. His statement was completely ignored by the Party. A day after his statement, all the Regional NDC Chairmen held a meeting and declared their support for their National Chairman, as against the President. This President is a Master of the Art of Double-Speak- I have used three weeks to prove that. The fact is that: “The President, his government and his NDC Party have vowed to reduce the Judiciary to a Rubber-Stamp. That if they pronounced anybody guilty, the Courts must endorse that. And they will not relent until they achieve this goal- Period!”
The Prophet’s Counsel
I want to appeal to the Judges to be strong, uphold and apply the Law without any form of fear and discrimination. God is with them; our ancestors are with them; all the good people of the world are with them. Even the NDC will need them, especially when they become an opposition party. The NDC’s position now is unacceptable and mischievous. It is a short-sighted and dangerous position; and must be rejected by all fair and just minded people- especially members of the Christian church, committed Christians; and practitioners of religions that uphold the dignity of the human person!
Prophet Micaiah
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