Chief Justice Adds To Kufuor's Misery

Only two years into his Presidency and President J. A. Kufuor is already a miserable President. But for the fact that his "zero tolerance for corruption" policy is only applicable to ex-NDC Ministers and officials, he himself and most of his Ministers and officials would either be in jail or be facing the Fast Track High Courts.

Direct accusations of corruption, charges of drug trafficking and lewd stories of sex scandals have been made against President Kufuor and his team, but the Attorney General refuses to initiate any action on them and a pliant and compromised media continue to present those accusations as if they rather go to the credit of the NPP Government.

Sahara, Peugeotgate, the Ministerial Bungalows Repair Scandal, the illegal Presidential Residence Renovations, the criminal Castle Renovations, the embarrassing IFC US$1 Billion loan scam -- these and many more are all corruption and corruption-related scandals which stand to the debit side of the NPP Government and have made President Kufuor very miserable indeed.

The arrest of the three Dzorwulu NPP Women's Wing executives at the Kotoka International Airport with 1.97 kilograms of heroin being smuggled to the USA and the revelation by Ms. Martha Nkrumah, "snatched" from the matrimonial home of her husband Tony Osei-Tutu by Deputy Minister Thomas Broni, that her husband Tony, a leading financier of the NPP, was a drug dealer, points in the direction of the NPP being a Party financed with drugs money, a matter that had long remained at the level of political rumour. The Thomas Broni "wife-snatching" sex scandal is only news because the henpecked husband decided to put the scandal in the public domain. But we have the story of what one of them did with the wife of a very prominent Ashanti chief, which ended in the chief divorcing the wife. We reported last week the scandal involving a member of the President's "Kitchen Cabinet" and Nii Ntansah of London.

We have stories of two of their top most Ministers who have been caught "in flagrante delicto" with young girls who are not their wives in the back seats of their cars and have had to pay huge sums of money to their discoverers in order to "close the docket on the cases. We have many, many more.

Now enter Chief Justice Edward Wiredu, the man who was dismissed from the Judiciary, reinstated with his benefits on the intervention of the then PNDC's Mr. Justice D. F. Annan, transferred to the Non-Performing Assets Recovery Trust (NPART) , retired with his benefits, and restored to the Judiciary first as Acting Chief Justice, and then as the substantive Chief Justice, with his numerous "faux pas" and unconstitutional actions which only go to make President Kufuor even more miserable. President Kufuor is however powerless to call Chief Justice Wiredu to order, even in the informal corridors of the NPP to which they both belong, for after all, the Chief Justice has a child with the sister of the President's wife, Mama Theresa Kufuor.

As the Head of the Judiciary, when it suited him, he issued a "Practice Direction" which enabled him to change the composition of the Supreme Court panel to hear the case of Fati Seidu (NDC) v. Hawa Yakubu (NPP) and strangely pronounced judgement to stop the re-count of the disputed Bawku Central vote as ordered by the Tamale High Court which was clearly won by Fati Seidu. And yet, two weeks ago, the Chief Justice unashamedly sided with the majority in the 4-1 decision in the Wulensi election petition case to the effect that the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction to entertain election petitions and petitions from election petitions, arguing that all such petitions and appeals terminated at the Court of Appeal.

Chief Justice Wiredu it was who joined forces with President Kufuor and the Attorney General to manipulate the composition of the Supreme Court in the Tsatsu Tsikata Fast Track High Court Case and succeeded in getting a "bogus and fraudulent" judgement to the effect that the Fast Track High Court was constitutional when a properly constituted Supreme Court had ruled by a 5-4 decision that the Fast Track High Courts were unconstitutional. Chief Justice Wiredu it was who butted into a Joy FM "Newsfile" Programme and uttered the now immortal but illiterate sentence that in calling for his resignation, the NDC Legal Committee had "acted out of ignoramus".

We also remember that there is currently before the President a petition alleging that Chief Justice Wiredu has falsified his age and that he committed perjury when he appeared before the Parliamentary Vetting Committee. On the administrative side, wonder of wonders, the Chief Justice, the administrative Head of the Judiciary, who is supposed to know the law, instructed that a Constitutional Instrument increasing court filing fees by a whopping 1,500% which had not yet been approved by Parliament, should nevertheless be implemented. It took an unprecedented strike action by lawyers of the Greater Accra branch of the Ghana Bar Association to have the unconstitutional and illegal action of the Chief Justice stopped. "Ghana Palaver" has learnt that there was even a further illegality about the Constitutional Instrument. It is alleged that the person who purported to represent the Ghana Bar Association at the meeting of the Judicial Service Council at which the decision to increase the filing fees was taken, Dr. Seth Twum, a known and top NPP activist, had at the time of the meeting been appointed to and sworn in as a Justice of the Supreme Court and therefore could not have represented the Ghana Bar Association.

He however wisely refused to sign the decision to increase the filing fees. Further examples of the Chief Justice's administrative blunders include his decision to build ultra-modern walls around his house and the Supreme Court Buildings when the insides of the courts look like pig-sties and court houses around the country are in the most dilapidated of states, the Cocoa Affairs Court being the worst example. It was the same Chief Justice who instructed that motions be moved only on Mondays, forgetting that the same lawyer may be involved in motions in different courts in the same town or in different courts in different towns on the same day. Clearly, the way the Chief Justice handled the matter of the unconstitutional Constitutional Instrument makes him suspect in his grasp of the law. The way he has handled his functions as administrative Head of the Judiciary also makes him appear incompetent in administration. But he is suspected to be hanging in there because of his relationship by affinity with the President and because he appears to have successfully made the Judiciary into an appendage of the Executive.

That is why the Ghana Palaver fully supports the Greater Accra branch of the Ghana Bar Association in its resolution of loss of confidence in the Chief Justice and its call on him to resign. Whether their call has the support of the National Bar or not, we believe that the Greater Accra Regional Bar has taken a step in the right direction. It is a call that will stop the Chief Justice from adding to the misery of President Kufuor and that will also remove the perception of the Judiciary in the era of the NPP as a willing tool in the hands of the Executive.