It’s been back-to-back banter between former President, John Dramani Mahama and Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Godfred Dame over the past few days.
The two appear to have been raising respective arguments about the current position of the Judiciary and the perception of the public about same.
This follows comments by former President Mahama at a forum held for lawyers of the National Democratic Congress on August 28 about the decline in public trust and faith in the Judicial system under the current Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo-led government.
How it started:
The ex-president, John Mahama lamented that the judiciary has a ‘broken image under the current leadership of the Chief Justice.
He said Ghanaians were losing trust in the judiciary, owing to some of its unanimous decisions – a situation he explains as dangerous to the country’s democracy. According to Mahama, it will only take a new Chief Justice to chart a path to regaining public trust in the judiciary.
“There is therefore an 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 courts 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 a new Chief Justice will lead a process to repair the broken image that our judiciary has acquired over the last few years,” Mahama submitted over the weekend.
Godfred Dame punches back:
His comments appear to have struck some nerves and warranted response from the Attorney General, who thought the former president’s sentiments and opinions were way below the belt.
Mr. Dame didn’t fail to establish this when he spoke during the 2022 Ghana Bar Annual Conference in Ho on Monday, September, 12, 2022.
On his part, he said that Mr. Mahama’s utterances were unwarranted, and deplorable, particularly having come from a man he described as having occupied the highest office of the land.
He further noted that the ex-president’s attacks were unjustified considering the court is available to administer justice according to the law and not a – in his words; “mercy chamber to serve justice based on sympathy or affection”.
Mr. Dame further accused Mr. Mahama of having launched the said attacks owing to the unanimous dismissal of the Election Petition by the Supreme Court in 2020 following the general elections in which he lost to the current Nana Addo Dankwa-led government.
“I observed that this was really the latest installment of systematic and caustic attacks on our courts by the former President, albeit unjustified.
“...Such conduct is clearly deplorable, coming from one who has occupied the highest office of President and aspires again to that office,” he noted.
“It will be a sore omission if I fail to recognise that there have been other leaders of the political party to which the former President belongs – the National Democratic Congress (NDC). I do not recall either the late Jerry John Rawlings or the late Prof. John Evans Atta Mills mount such a systematic and deliberate campaign of hate against the Judiciary. In fact, never once did Mr. Mahama’s former boss, Prof Mills launch any attack at all on the Judiciary.
“Closely examined, one will notice that the source of the former President’s unjustified attacks on the Judiciary is the unanimous dismissal by the Supreme Court of his rather porous election petition, which indeed was dead on arrival and bound to be dismissed by any court worth its salt in any country. One cannot fail to note that his petition before the Court in 2021 was a bundle of incompetent claims devoid of any substance.
“As stated already, the allegations of “wrong aggregation of votes” and “vote padding,” which he put before the Court, collectively involved only 6,622 votes, a figure which could not in any way affect the outcome of the presidential election. It is therefore perplexing how, if such a petition is dismissed by the Court, it should form the basis for allegations of unfair treatment by the Court.
“It ought to be understood that it is the duty of the courts to administer justice according to law. The court is not a mercy chamber to serve justice based on sympathy or affection,” he added.
Mahama claps back:
This was not all done because the former president had to reiterate his concerns and address what had been thrown by his ‘opponent’ in this ‘battle’ – there was a response and a hard one at that.
In an interview with TV3, John Dramani Mahama responded to the initial reactions of the Attorney General.
Indeed, he was emphatic about standing by his words about the public perception of the Judiciary, while maintaining his recommendations about what work must be put in to restore that image.
Mr. Mahama, raising points from what Mr. Dame said, he (Mahama) said that he is in no position to ‘lose his rights’ about speaking truth to power about issues of public importance he sees worth discussing.
He also downplayed Mr. Dame’s comments about using his position as a former head of state in a wrong manner to attack the courts – he saw absolutely nothing wrong with what he said.
“What was my statement? That the perception of the Ghanaian about the judiciary is low and I was making a call to action that we should change the perception.
“How can that be impudent? I didn’t put the judiciary where it is. So if you occupy a high office of the land you shouldn’t speak the truth? Is that what it means? Do we believe that if we go to court, we’ll get justice?
“We hear every day, instances of perverted justice and all that, and recently, the Chief Justice, in a statement read for him by Justice Dotse, raised some of these issues himself and I will applaud him for it because I had said in my statement that I had lost faith in the current leadership to be able to do anything about reforming it and I hoped that a new Chief Justice will do that.
“...I saw some positive jewels in it that he (Justice Dotse) was calling judges to dispense justice freely and fairly, transparently so that people will feel that confidence to go to the Judiciary because the Judiciary is the last arbiter,” he said.
Adding;
“We must have confidence that it will do so fairly, according to the law and in the public interest, that’s all I was saying and how he was able to translate that to say that I was impudent, blah blah blah, so if you are former president, you see something going wrong in this country, you have no right to talk about it? Is that what he is saying? No, I won’t let him take that right from me. If I see something wrong, I’ll point it out, it is my duty to do so.
“I have a voice that is listened to in this country and I think that if something is going wrong and I talk about it, it makes it topical so that something can be done about it and that’s why I continue to make the statements that I make.
“I’m talking about where people take good cases to court and get bad outcomes. I just think that they should go by the oath of office that they take that they shall dispense justice fairly and I’m sure if they did that, the image of the Judiciary will rise in the eyes of the public.
“There are complaints that are made about judges, and no decision is taken against those judges after investigations but you don’t hear anything, nothing happens and the judges continue to do what they want.
“Part of it is the parking of this court by the president, he’s appointed more judges in the history of this country than any other government. From the circuit court right to the upper court and most of them are people who are exposed as political party operatives and if you put them together, what happens?" he further noted.
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