Former UN Senior Governance Advisor, Professor Baffour Agyeman-Duah, has criticised former President Nana Akufo-Addo for his actions which he says have opened the floodgates for the removal of important high-profile office holders in Ghana.
Professor Agyeman-Duah believes in the separation of powers and suggests that cases involving top officials of different arms of government must meet a high threshold before any action to remove them from office.
For him, various options could be explored in dealing with such matters, rather than being a conveyor belt to forward petitions to the Council of State to have officials removed in a manner that may undermine other forms of government.
He was speaking in relation to the suspension of Chief Justice Gertrude Torkonoo and the set-up of a committee to probe allegations made against her in a petition seeking to remove her from office.
In retrospect of similar cases in the past, Professor Agyeman-Duah, who was a guest on Newsfile on Saturday, April 26, suggested that President Akufo-Addo could have handled matters in a better way that would not have armed his predecessors to do the same.
President Akufo-Addo sacked Charlotte Osei and her two deputies, Amadu Sulley and Georgina Opoku Amakwah, in 2018.
The decision was based on the recommendations of the Justice Benin Committee set up by former Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo to investigate a petition for her removal. The Committee concluded that Madam Osei had blatantly breached procurement laws in the award of several contracts prior to election 2016.
Relating it to the ongoing case of the current Chief Justice, Professor Agyeman-Duah, said: “The president [Akufo-Addo] told the country that he was simply a conveyor belt [in former Electoral Commission boss Charlotte Osei’s case], suggesting that he had not even reviewed the petition and simply submitted it, and the process went on, and we know the outcome,”
He added: “That, in retrospect, could have been a very bad decision of the president, setting a bad precedent, I should say.”
The probe and suspension of the Chief Justice have divided Ghanaians, with a section, led by the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), planning to hit the streets in protest.
For Prof. Agyeman-Duah, “it is always important to protect the separation of powers of the arms of government”.
In view of that, he said the situation could have been handled differently, citing the way former President Akufo-Addo handled a different petition against the chair of the Electoral Commission (EC), Jean Mensah.
“What is submitted to the president, the president can decide to move it forward or not to move it forward. I think, towards the elections, there was one petition that was submitted to President Akufo-Addo. We all saw the response he gave, apparently suggesting that there was no prima facie case. That was one way, and it was an option to avoid this interference and the separation of power notion. In this case, the president decided otherwise, and you cannot fault him because he was following the process.”
Professor Agyeman-Duah opposed options, especially in the unprecedented case of the Chief Justice, that would not erode the authority of the judiciary.
“There have been instances where presidents have been very angry with chief justices, and if you look at how they dealt with them, it gives you some guidance, because for a democracy the last thing you want to see is for the the Executive to behave in any way to undermine the other arm of government, in this case the Judiciary. So, presidents have been very circumspect; in fact, they have restrained themselves,” he admonished.
