John Dramani Mahama (left), Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo (right)
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo appears to have taken a swipe at former President John Dramani Mahama while speaking to lawyers at the 2022 Ghana Bar Annual Conference in Ho.
The president, in a speech he delivered, said that some people are internationally denigrating the image of Ghana’s justice delivery system because of their own political interests.
The president indicated that he did not resort to tarnishing the image of the court when he lost the 2013 elections petition but Mahama has waged a war against the court even though he lost his 2020 election petitions unanimously.
“Just as government continues to implement policies to advance the rule of law and thereby re-enforce the confidence in the people and shore up our nation as a country governed by rule of law. There are some that have made it their political agenda to disarray systematically the image of the judiciary for selfish parochial partisan reasons.
“These are the plaintiffs who go to court, indeed the highest court of the land, and provide the skimpiest of evidence to back their claims and yet insist that their claims be upheld despite the elementary violation of the ancient common law rule of the discharge of the burden of proof that such a resort will entail,” he said.
The president added that, “It is no wonder that their claims were unanimously dismissed 7-0 by the apex court. The result of this case is in stark contrast to the result in 2013 when the unsuccessful plaintiffs managed to persuade four out of a nine-member court to fight for them and yet the earlier plaintiffs chose not to wage a political war against the court.”
Ex-President Mahama, at a forum held for lawyers of the National Democratic Congress on August 28, 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.
He stated that it would 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.
