Former President Mahama’s repeated attempts to improperly influence and undermine the judiciary has been audacious enough and it needs calling out.
Yes John Mahama has displayed a troubling pattern of attacking judges and the Supreme court for rulings he disagrees with. It is a pattern that began after the 2020 presidential election petition, and has continued into his opposition reigns.
In his recent rumblings, Mahama blasted the supreme court again on Saturday describing the court’s decision over the removal of James Gyakye Quayson from being the Member of Parliament (MP) for Assin-North as plain nonsensical. During a speech in Assin Bereku to his party supporters over the weekend, the former president said the “courts seem to be so political” and called the verdict on Gyakye Quayson as disgraceful and political.
Mahama also suggested taking action against the judges in the near future: “the judges are doing politics instead of interpreting the law. We will by all means revisit these matters in the future,” Mahama added.
For me, that was another soundbite without any thoughtfulness and logic. It was a way too much tirades from an alcoholic in denial.
What a pity to see a rudderless politician descending into the gutters for the sake of partisanship and expediency.
Obviously, Mahama hasn’t seen any wisdom in the Shakespearean tale of brevity being the soul of wit. Otherwise, he would have realised that his strikingly personal attacks and vendetta against the Judiciary have consequences. In the sense that, people on the edge can easily be pushed over the edge once the rhetoric gets going. It also threatens our entire system of government and signals a remarkable disregard for judicial independence.
On some level, these tirades and the suggestion by John Mahama that he would tackle the judiciary sometime in the future, are quite incomprehensible, dangerous and yet one more example of egregious overreach by a former president who has lost it entirely.
In actual fact, politicians from both sides of the political aisle have disagreed with court rulings all the time. Additionally conflicts between the courts and the political branches are common and, to some degree, expected. But there’s a line between disagreeing with court rulings and being snide, foolhardy, intemperate and sort of throwing the judiciary under the bus.
The courts are bulwarks of our Constitution and laws, and they depend on the public to respect their judgments and on officials to obey and enforce their decisions.
And again, challenging the legitimacy of the court’s role and doing that without any reference to applicable law is inflammatory, undemocratic and authoritarianism.
Politicians and public officials have a responsibility to respect courts and judicial decisions. And this is something the former doesn’t seem to appreciate.
When politicians invent lazy slurs of their own, we must be bold to call them out. We can’t leave sanity behind and continue to engage in such gleeful explosion
with sweary exchanges of fire and verbal diarrhea spattered across the political public space.
Quite clearly, Mr Mahama hasn’t figured out yet that picking a curious series of public fights with the judiciary and its related confrontational stunts also reflects his capabilities as a leader.
Ghanaians must ignore Mahama’s stinking power drunkeness.
Ernest Kofi Owusu Bempah Bonsu
Deputy Director of Communications, NPP