Justice is not synonymous with morality - Legal practitioner

Tamale, July 18, GNA - A Tamale based legal practitioner, Mr Mohammed Alhassan, said the judiciary administered justice according to the law and not based on morality or necessarily the ordinary man's sense of justice. He said the general notion of justice by the people was synonymous wit= h morality and therefore to them when a decision of a court did not meet the moral bench marks, there was no justice. Mr Alhassan, a Lecturer in Business Law at the Tamale Polytechnic, sai= d this when he spoke on the topic: 93The Judiciary and Judicial System in Ghana," at the 11th Annual Constitution Week celebration in Tamale at the weekend.

The forum was organised by the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) in collaboration with Governance Africa Foundation. Mr Alhassan said the law and morality were not necessarily bedfellows, noting that when they coincided everyone was happy but when they conflict, different opinions and sentiments were expressed and the law was castigated when justice was not in accord with moral justice.

He, however, emphasized that justice according to the law placed a dut= y on the judiciary to ensure that the mighty and powerful did not hold sway, but that the rule of law prevailed. "When the independence of the judiciary is undermined or compromised= , citizens lose confidence in the judicial system and may decline to send their cases to the courts and this sets a stage for chaos and anarchy in society," he said. Mr Alhassan recollected some instances in the past where political parties and individuals refused to send their cases to the courts because they said they had lost confidence in the judicial system. He said in order to put an end to these sad experiences there was the need to uphold and respect the institutional arrangement for the independence of the judiciary so as to have a society governed by the rule of law. Mr Alhasssan noted that there were some challenges confronting the judiciary in the delivery of justice and suggested that to overcome those challenges some measures had to be taken.

He mentioned some of the measures to include stopping undue pressure from the executive arm of government and attempts to influence appointments and promotions of the superior judges. He also called for an end to the over politicization of decisions of the courts.

Mrs Augustine Akosua Akumanyi, Deputy Chairperson of the NCCE, urged political parties in the country to use their policies and programmes to recruit the youth into their parties as it was done in advanced democracies rather than using material inducements.

She said political parties should not only be mass movements where people joined because of family associations and other considerations rathe= r than the individuals own convictions due to the parties known policies. "It is only in this country that people say they are ready to die fo= r a politician because of some cash incentives," she said.

Mr Moses Bukari Mabengba, Northern Regional Minister, in a speech read for him, called on all stakeholders to assist the NCCE to develop the country's democracy to a stage where citizens could develop their potenti= als in a free and democratic environment.