I just finished reading the prompt and poignant response of Ms. Susan Aryeetey, the Acting Executive-Director of the Ghana Chapter of the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA), and can only unreservedly beam with pride in the fact of not only the timely and the unimpeachable rise of FIDA and its Acting Executive-Director to the occasion of the perennially anti-feminist and the partisan and the perennially relentless persecution and bullying of Ghanaian women scholars and accomplished crackerjack professionals by the good-game talking, conveniently populist and the faux-democratic and the scandalously extortionate regime of the institutional establishment of the late Chairman Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings-founded so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC) – (See “CJ Torkornoo’s Suspension Threatens Gender Parity in Leadership – FIDA-Ghana” Modernghana.com 4/24/25).
In the main, Ms. Aryeetey opportunely raises the critical question of the seemingly relentless siege being waged against the entirety of Ghana’s Judicial Establishment vis-a-vis the latter institutional establishment’s statutory independence under the rule of law and order under Ghana’s 1992 NDC-drafted, cannibalized and implemented Republican Constitution. The foregoing principle regarding the institutional and the functional independence of the Judiciary is of utmost significance, in view of the fact that the clearly flagrant and the politically egregious suspension of Chief Justice Gertrude Araba Esaaba Sackey-Torkornoo, as usual and predictably, appears to have unduly taken the turn of a personality squabble, when it is the role and the function of the Judiciary in the political culture of Ghana’s Fourth Republic that is inescapably at issue here.
As this author has already extensively highlighted in previously published innumerable articles and media columns, the history of the leadership of the National Democratic Congress, beginning with the politically and the socioeconomically catastrophic emergence of the party’s late Founding-Father, Chairman Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings, is replete with incidents of wholesale and blanket policies aimed at effective Judicial Nullification or Neutralization and the wanton and the barbaric persecution and the brutal assassination of courageous law-and-order advocates and promoters, among the august ranks of our astute and hardworking and patriotic jurists and legal luminaries.
Under the watch and the tenure of President John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama, Ghanaians have been eerily made aware in no uncertain terms, that the standard judicial benchmark of evidence-based verdicts and decisions have absolutely no place in the political culture and the operational protocols of the leadership of the National Democratic Congress. We witnessed a striking example of the foregoing temper in the virulent and the intemperate call by a forensically defeated Candidate Mahama in the wake of the 2020 Presidential Election, the most transparent of its kind, as declared and certified by International Observers from the European Union and Community, The Commonwealth Group, among other globally respected organizations and associations, when without having presented a single shred of evidence to back up his pontifical claim of ballot rigging, a seismically defeated Candidate Mahama literally called for the head of then-Chief Justice Kwasi Anin-Yeboah to be delivered on a diamond-gilt platter, because the Asante-Nyinahin native had dared to call a spade by its globally recognized and canonized designation by handing down a decision in favor of the real and forensically proven winner of Ghana’s 2020 Presidential Election.
Which is why it comes as absolutely not the least bit surprising that the entire process of seeking to summarily dismiss Chief Justice Gertrude Araba Esaaba Sackey-Torkornoo has been virtually shrouded in mystery and hearsay, even as, once again, President Mahama scurrilously attempts to use the legally non-binding institutional establishment of the Ghana National Council-of-State to achieve his aim of vilifying and discrediting one of the country’s most astute, dynamic and erudite jurists in Ghana’s postcolonial history.
It goes almost absolutely without saying that Chief Justice Gertrude Sackey-Torkornoo has served the country and the Ghanaian people as a far better Head of the Country’s Apex Court and Judicial Establishment than the twice nonconsecutively elected President Mahama has managed the affairs of the country. But, of course, what is even more important to highlight here is the thinly veiled anti-feminist attempt by the Bole-Bamboi native, from the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo-created Savannah Region, to literally ride roughshod over the hard-won image and the reputation of the Chief Justice by criminally and falsely pretending to be about the dogged pursuit of statutorily sanctioned law and order.
This, too, is absolutely no happenstance at all; for Mr. Mahama hails from one of the ethnic groups in the country where women scarcely have any remarkable semblance of civil and human rights, a place where the very deadly expression of “Witch-Hunting” may very well have been invented. Which is essentially and fundamentally why all progressive-minded Ghanaian lovers of the inalienable rule of law and order and the impartial application of the administration of justice need to stand up and be promptly and proudly counted among the fierce and the relentless defenders of the inviolable principles of democratic justice in Ghana’s postcolonial political culture.
If, indeed, Chief Justice Gertrude Araba Esaaba Sackey-Torkornoo, according to the morally dubious playbook of President John “European Airbus SE Payola” Dramani Mahama, does not deserve to serve as Head of the nation’s Judicial Establishment, then Mr. Mahama also needs to establish reasonably well beyond the proverbial shadow and the iota of a doubt, what makes our ballot-snatching Chief-Executive-of-State qualify to so cavalierly preside over the affairs and the destiny of the Ghanaian people.
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
April 26, 2025
E-mail: [email protected]
