Nana Aba Anamoah’s caustic castigation of the leadership of the country’s main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) for hitting the streets to vehemently protest the recent suspension of Chief Justice Gertrude Araba Esaaba Sackey-Torkornoo as being tantamount to the prejudicial and partisan upholding of double standards lacks merit, because the renowned broadcast personality woefully fails to properly contextualize the significantly different set of circumstances that precipitated the dismissal of Mrs. Charlotte Kesson-Smith Osei from her post as Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (See “You Didn’t Protest When Charlotte Osei Was Unfairly Removed – Nana Aba Anamoah to NPP” Ghanaweb.com 5/7/25).
If the notoriously cantankerous alumna of Ghana National College, Cape Coast – presently renamed the Ghana National Senior High School – had paid sedulous attention at the time of Charlotte Osei’s appointment as Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, in the wake of the retirement of Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, she would have heard Prof. Ernest Kofi Abotsi advise then President John “I Have No Classmates in Ghana” Dramani Mahama in a critically informed media column that the National Democratic Congress-drafted and implemented 1992 Republican Constitution expressly prohibited or strongly advised against the “lateral” transfer of the Chairpersons of any of the Seven, or so, to-date, statutorily mandated Commissions, such as the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), from being cavalierly and capriciously or arbitrarily transferred from one Commission to another.
At the time of her patently “unconstitutional” appointment as Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, as the immediate successor to Dr. Afari-Gyan, Mrs. Osei was already the duly sworn and substantive Chairperson of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE). Consequently, the flagrantly unconstitutional decision by Mr. Mahama to appoint Mrs. Osei to the “lateral” or “coordinate” portfolio of EC Chairperson breached a statutorily entrenched diktat of Ghana’s Fourth-Republican Constitution, in the authoritative and the scholastically unimpeachable opinion of the University of Ghana and the Harvard University-educated legal luminary.
So, what is so “rocket sciency” about this simple truth of the reality of the deliberate and the egregious and the flagrant violation of the fundamental rule of law and order in the country for Nana Aba Anamoah to fully appreciate or comprehend? The fact of the matter is that the leadership of the National Democratic Congress, almost to a person, is thoroughly composed of criminally minded scofflaws who, the unvarnished truth be told, have absolutely no business being sworn into public office as “Honorable” Ministers of State, much less being voted into office to make laws for the overwhelming majority of civically responsible Ghanaian citizens and the longsuffering electorate.
Plus, the performance track record of EC Chairperson Charlotte Osei – my adopted Dear Sister – was inexcusably blighted by her brazen defiance of the Chief Justice Georgina Theodora Wood-presided Supreme Court of Ghana, including the extant EC Chairperson’s flat and abject refusal to strictly adhere to the definitive interpretation of the statutory guidelines regarding the proper and the legitimate Citizenship Identification Documents to be used by each and every bona fide Ghanaian citizen to register to vote in the country’s General Elections.
Now, what the foregoing observation means is that Mrs. Osei could have easily been impeached and relieved of her duties and her portfolio by then-President Akufo-Addo, based on any number of reasons, other than those directly verging on her flagrant breaches of the alleged procurement protocols as a result of which she was eventually removed. Equally significantly, according to Prof. Abotsi, the former Dean of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) and, presently, Dean of the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA), President Mahama’s capricious and clearly strategically suspicious transfer of Mrs. Osei from the National Commission for Civic Education flagrantly violated the constitutional protection of the independence of the aforesaid Commissions, as expressly granted by Ghana’s Fourth-Republican Constitution.
Now, for those National Democratic Congress’ partisans and cynics who have been scandalously arguing about Chief Justice Sackey-Torkornoo not being being either personally or professionally above reproach or the dictates of Ghana’s 1992 Constitution, it is actually the twice nonconsecutively elected President Mahama who has more than insufferably proven to rank himself over and above the sacred laws of our beloved Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana.
Ms. Anamoah also clearly and disturbingly demonstrates that she has absolutely not even the most basic appreciation of the fact that constitutionally and/or statutorily speaking, the title and the position of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Ghana is both in principle and practically or functionally on the same keel or pedestal as the position of the President of Ghana, together with the official status of the Speaker of Ghana’s Parliament, as Head of the institutional establishment of the Legislative Branch of our Government, that is, one of the three institutional establishments mandated with ensuring the prevalence and the maintenance of what is often termed as the “Checks and Balances” of Ghana’s democratic governance and culture.
The position or the portfolio of the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission does not absolutely in any way rise to the level of that of the Chief Justice or Jurist of the Highest Court of the Land. I, however, strongly suspect that Nana Aba Anamoah has decided to impetuously and petulantly take on Chief Justice Sackey-Torkornoo in order to publicly and gratuitously disrespect “Her Lordship” because, like Mrs. Charlotte Osei, the Cape Coast-born Winneba native, from the Central Region, is also a woman.
But then, one also wonders why Nana Aba Anamoah had not gone to bat for an even more scandalously besieged Chief Justice Georgina Theodora Wood, when the Mahama and the National Democratic Congress-sponsored Montie Trio of Media Goons systematically harassed and threatened to sexually violate the longest-serving Chief Justice in postcolonial Ghanaian history, as well as summarily dismember those of her Associates on the Supreme Bench deemed to be ideologically sympathetic towards the institutional establishment and the leadership of the then opposition New Patriotic Party? Come on, Obaasima Aba Anamoah, let’s talk about who the real practitioner of “Double Standards” is right here within the preceding context.
By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
E-mail: [email protected]
