The Judicial Service Staff Association of Ghana (JUSAG) has condemned former President John Dramani Mahama over what it described as “unfair” comments directed at the judiciary.
Former President Mahama had suggested a new chief justice to rebrand the judiciary due to what he said was a bad image created by the current leadership.
In a response, JUSAG President Alex Nartey said, “such a statement is not fair to the judiciary, and I think he must be fair to the Chief Justice”.
“The chief justice has not changed any of the procedures. He has not altered any of the laws based upon which these decisions are taken,” he defended his position.
Mr. Nartey explained that the former president need not confuse his disagreement with a court judgment with a biased judge.
“The fact that you disagree with the judgment does not mean the judge who rendered that decision has no integrity,” Mr. Nartey stressed.
The JUSAG President reiterated that the law provided avenues to challenge judgments from courts.
“When nobody has prevented you from resorting to legally prescribed means to capsize or turn the designs of the court that are made based on the laws of the land, you are being unfair.”
“The mere fact that the parties before the court disagree on the court’s decision does not mean something wrong has been done that cannot be cured by law,” Mr. Nartey added.
Mr Nartey made these comments on Citi TV’s Point of View on 29 August 2022.
Background
Former President John Dramani Mahama had observed that it would take a new chief justice to lead the process to repair what he said was the “badly dented image” of Ghana’s judiciary for people to win the trust in the system.
For him, the deteriorated image of the judiciary quickly sparks laughter from the citizenry when one decides to go to the court for justice.
Former President Mahama made the statement at the opening of the 2nd Annual Lawyers Conference of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) on Sunday, 28 August 2022.
“Recently, 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 met with derisive laughter instead of hope that one will truly get justice if he went to court.
“If people are not poking fun about politics and inducement 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 but serious development.”
“One of the scariest existential threats to any democracy is when citizens think their judiciary holds no value for them or 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. If care is not taken, we will 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 in the system.”
“There is, 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.”
“Unfortunately, we have no hope that the current leadership of our judiciary can lead such a process of change. We can only hope that the new Chief Justice will lead the process to repair the broken image that our judiciary has acquired over the last few years,” Mr Mahama explained.