When will former President John Dramani Mahama apologize to the Chief Justice ,Mr Kwasi Anin Yeboah and six others who presided over the 2020 election petition , is the question people are asking since the Asiedu Nketiah tape went viral.
Mr Asiedu Nketiah the General Secretary of the NDC and a National Chairman Aspirant at a meeting with some NDC delegates admitted that the party went to the Supreme Court to challenge the outcome of the 2020 presidential election with no evidence.
Mr Mahama, the petitioner in the case has been at the forefront of judicial attacks since losing the petition calling the judges who presided over the petition all sorts of names.
At the opening of 2nd Annual Lawyers Conference of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) on Sunday August 28, 2022 the NDC Presidential Candidate stated that it will 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 easily sparks laughter from the citizenry when one decides to go to the court for justice.
“Recently, so badly has the image of our judiciary deteriorated that many of our citizenry openly make 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 the 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 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 observed.
Frustrated by his unabated attacks on the Judiciary, a retired Court of Appeal judge, Justice Isaac Douse, had to caution former President Mahama to stop dragging the image of the Supreme Court in the mud.
According to him, such actions have the propensity to jeopardise the country’s democracy, while urging the former President and his likes who always seek to denigrate the judiciary to learn from history.
“It is difficult to agree with him [Mahama] on the soiled image of the judiciary. The judiciary has a range from the magistrate court all the way to the Supreme Court. From what I have read, he has a problem with the Supreme Court and the cases that they took there, and history has shown us something that we should not do too frequently,” Justice Douse intimated.
Following the confession by the General Secretary of the NDC and a National Chairman Aspirant Johnson Asiedu Nketiah to the effect that the party had no evidence to challenge the 2020 presidential election pressure is mounting on the former president Mahama to be humble enough and apologize to the judges and his followers for making them the subject of mockery.
Director of Legal Affairs of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Gary Nimako is also demanding an apology from the NDC and Mr Mahama for their unwarranted attacks on the Justices who presided over the case.
In the tape, he was heard explaining to party faithful that the Director of IT had failed to electronically collate the evidence the party needed to contest the outcome of the presidential election.
“With this revelation having come out to the public domain, I think Ghanaians deserve an apology from the NDC, especially from former President Mahama to apologise to Ghanaians and the court because if they knew from day one that in fact, they had no evidence at all…yet they managed to go to court with the hope that they get Jean Mensa to mount the witness box and cross-examine her.”
“They really misled Ghanaians and their supporters and the way they treated the court. They have to eat the humble pie and apologise,” he told Ernest Kojo Manu on Joy FM’s Top Story on Wednesday.
But Mr. Amaliba said the party’s decision to contest the 2020 election results was justified, thus the demand for an apology is unnecessary.
“It is uncalled for, they are looking for a twin in the NDC, they can’t get that twin and no apology is going to come from anybody in the NDC,” he said.
Speaking on Joy FM’s Top Story on Wednesday, Mr. Amaliba said the decision to contest the election results was because the EC boss’ results were inconsistent.
“We did not come there with pink sheet, we are challenging the collated results by the EC and how come those figures kept changing,” he told Ernest Kojo Manu.
The NDC’s Director of Legal Affairs said the party’s strategy was to use the EC boss as the main witness because she was the sole “custodian” of the results.
“She is the custodian of all those documents including the pink sheet, why? because in Techiman South didn’t we send our pink sheet and the EC brought a different pink sheet and the numbers did not tally and they are not in unison and the judge said that he will rely on the EC’s pink sheet?,” he asked.
A group calling itself Alliance For Footsoldiers Advocacy (AFFA) says it is alarmed by the contents of a recently leaked audio tape believed to be the voice of NDC General Secretary AFFA maintained that it is scandalized by the ‘confessions’ of Asiedu Nketiah given the fact that the NDC, led by Former President Mahama, has since March 2021 bastardized Judges of the Supreme Court at every least occasion; describing them as “Unanimous 7FC” and appendages of President Akufo-Addo following the dismissal of his defective election petition.
By Yaw Obeng Manu