John Mahama
The flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Mahama, has once again hit at the Judiciary, describing it as non-independent leading to deterioration in the country’s governance model.
The former President, who said this during the second day of his tour in the Northern Region, said state institutions including the Judiciary have been undermined, which is affecting their image in the international community.
He said, “Anywhere I go, the question people outside Ghana ask me is, ‘Ghana, what happened to you? Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana, what happened to you?’ Everybody looked up to Ghana as the model of democracy, but today, we are a bad model of democracy. Our Judiciary is not independent, and all our state institutions have been undermined. People once viewed Ghana as a country that exemplified economic management; today, our economy is in shambles.”
Mr. Mahama’s comments comes in the wake of the ongoing legal tussle between the Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin and the Majority Leader and Member of Parliament for Effutu, Alexander Afenyo-Markin for a legal interpretation by the Supreme Court when the Speaker declared four parliamentary seats vacant.
The Supreme Court subsequently issued a stay on the Speaker’s declaration, but the Speaker countered with a suit seeking to reverse its decision to issue an interlocutory injunction against his declaration of the four parliamentary seats as vacant.
But a five-member panel of the court presided over by Chief Justice, Gertrude Torkornoo, after hearing arguments from the lawyer for Alban Bagbin, Thaddeus Sory, counsel for Afenyo-Markin, Paa Kwesi Abaidoo and the Attorney General, held that its earlier ruling was lawful as the Supreme Court has judicial review against any individual or arm of government, including Parliament as guaranteed by the 1992 Constitution.
It will be recalled that Mr. Mahama in 2022 and 2023, at the 3rd Annual Lawyers Conference of the National Democratic Congress, claimed that President Akufo-Addo deliberately appointed judges who are loyal to him at the various courts in order to avoid accountability once he leaves office and, therefore, called on NDC lawyers to pursue careers on the bench.
By Ebenezer K. Amponsah
