Tsatsu Tsikata, one of Ghana’s celebrated lawyers, stirred the honest nest last week when he singled out Supreme Court Judge, Justice Anin Yeboah for attack and described his judgments at the recent election petition hearings as ‘biased’. Mr. Tsikata did not end there but he also reasoned that Justice Anim Yeboah may have been against the Respondents because he was appointed a Supreme Court Judge by the NPP administration under President Kufuor.
Since Lawyer Tsikata made that ‘unfortunate’ statement, he has come under severe criticisms from all manner of people; big and small, low and high. Off course President Kufuor, through his office ‘fired’ Tsatsu Tsikata according to the Daily Guide Newspaper. The National Peace Council, represented by its Chairman, Professor Emmanuel Asante described Tsikata’s utterance as ‘stooping too low’ and ‘irresponsible’. Even the Ghana Bar Association (GBA) has threatened to drag the ‘distinguished’ lawyer to the General Legal Council for disciplinary action.
Mr. Tsikata has insisted that he spoke the ‘truth’ and therefore ‘does not owe anyone any apology’; not former President Kufuor and not Justice Anin Yeboah. So whose TRUTH did Tsatsu Tsikata speak? Today the Scandal wishes to take the risk of jumping into the fray and to express our opinion on this matter. Our truth is that GHANA IS MORTALLY DIVIDED and TRUTH comes in colors.
America’s CNN put it in another way; they reported that Ghanaians are ‘POLITICALLY DRUNK’. Irrespective of what they drink, drunken people do not have a picture of REALITY or the TRUTH. In Ghana today, it will appear that every living soul has political colors. It is extremely difficult to get one person who is not seen to be politically tainted.
Even our institutions have political colors. The Korle-bu Teaching Hospital and its Management have a perceived political bias. The Komfo-Anokye Hospital and its Management have a perceived political color. How many times have not Ghanaians wondered which political party Kwesi Nyantakyi and his GFA belong to? In the minds of Ghanaians, the Ghana Football Administration has a political bias.
The Trades Union Congress (TUC), the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), The Ghana Private Road Transport Owners Union (GPTRU), PROTOA, the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS), the Catholic Bishops Conference, the Methodist Bishops Conference, the General Council of the Presbyterian Church, the Christian Council, the Charismatic and Pentecostal Churches etc are all perceived to have political colors. And so whatever they do is suspected to be politically driven including when they read a scripture from the bible.
If the NDC holds their religious programmes Ghanaian can guess which Pastors are likely to be invited. ( Bishop Duncan Williams, Reverend Sam Korankye Ankrah, Bishop Agyin Asare, Reverend Eastwood Anaba, Dr. Lawrence Tetteh, etc.
On the other hand, if the NPP organizes their religious programmes they are more likely to go with the orthodox and conservative Pastors; the Catholic Bishops and Pastors like Palmer Buckle, Bishop Osei-Bonsu, Presbyterian Moderator Professor Mantey, the Methodist Bishops and Pastors, Old and New or even the charismatic Bishop Owusu Bempah and his colleagues.
We are not by any means saying that the people mentioned above are NDC or NPP members or supporters. This is all in the realm of perception. We can affirm that these religious leaders are men of integrity, full of the Holy Ghost and in reality should belong to a dimension of life higher than the ordinary where politics resides.
The reality also is that even group demonstrations in this country are become political. If Nuns from any convent went on a demonstration in Ghana today, there are people who will seek to know the backgrounds of their leaders, their tribes, political affiliations or even the friends they associate with in order to place them in a political party.
In this country, even when the Government increases school fees or withdraws support to students, one is most likely to see the TEIN (NDC’s Students Group) demonstrate in support of the increase or withdrawal. On the other hand if the NDC Government decided to give every student a laptop free of charge, you can be sure that TESCON (NPP’s Students Group) will issue a statement to say that the distribution of laptops is a vote catching ploy or merely for propaganda . That is how divided and bad it is.
So when a Ghanaian is to appear before a Judge, he first will need to know whether the said Judge is NDC or NPP. The NPP nearly protested against the inclusion of Justice Atuguba on the Nine Member Panel that heard the election petition. And if you examine Justice Atuguba’s rulings you could say the NPP’s initial protest was borne out of déjà vu.
Off course like most Ghanaians, Lawyer Tsikata who was Lead Counsel for the NDC in the petition hearing will definitely have his reservations about Judges he perceives to be pro-opposition NPP and Justice Anin Yeboah is one such Judge in his view. What Mr. Tsikata did not explain is why the five other Justices that were appointed by President Kufuor did not vote in favor of the NPP? Or better still Mr. Tsikata could also have concluded that the Judges who ruled in favor of the NDC did so because they were appointed by the (P-NDC). This is the reality of Ghana. We need a cure. We need a neutral Ghanaian.
In a country where KVIP toilets, Markets, Cities, Towns, Schools, Hospitals, Public Universities, Free Zones Board, Standards Board, Cocobod, State Banks, Metro Mass Transit, State Insurance, Ports and Harbors, State Media and even cooking for little school children are all managed by supporters of the ruling political party, it should not be out of place to suggest that a ruling Party (NPP or NDC) can pad up the Judiciary so that the Party and its supporters can be favored in times of trouble.
And now as you read this piece you are asking yourself; who wrote this? Is he NPP or NDC? If that is true why are we pretending that a verdict can drop from the heavens?
