By Otchere Darko
*Reference: “The committee (the nine-member committee constituted by the Chief Jus¬tice to investigate the allegations that the Supreme Court Justices, who sat on the just ended Presi¬dential election petition, might have been compromised as Victo¬ria Hammah indicated in the leaked tape) has been given a 14-day timeline to con¬clude its investigations and sub¬mit a report to the Judicial Coun¬cil for action.”
[*Above reference was taken from Ghanaweb General News of Thursday, 28 November 2013 captioned “CJ's Committee summons Vicky Hammah”; Source: Daily Guide]
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I wonder what the Chief Justice was thinking about when she set up the committee to investigate the serious allegations contained in the so-called “Vikileak tapes”.
I believe that our learned Chief Justice knows very well that, for it to submit a good and ‘worthy’ report, any investigation of this nature has to have not only adequate personnel to carry it out; but, also, it should have adequate time-duration to assist members carrying out such investigation to gather all the relevant information that can help their committee to submit a credible and usable report, which is why any government will ‘waste’ resources to set up such an investigative committee, in the first place.
*In the case of investigations relating to Ms Victoria Hammah’s serious allegations, the Justice Samuel Kofi Date-Bah Committee has to invite a number of [direct] witnesses named in the tapes, as well as hear other members of the Ghanaian public who may directly or indirectly want to volunteer vital information they hold, and which can assist the committee in whatever way deemed useful, and being in the public interest. *The Justice Date-Bah Committee, also, has to invite the nine Justices individually to delve into any matters that, otherwise, would have been considered as bordering on “private lives” of the judges; and, at best, to invite any one of them more than once, where necessary, to give each of the nine judges the chance to confirm or deny single allegation or all allegations that may be made against them (the Justices) individually or collectively; and to deal with other matters that may arise from, or be supplementary to the original allegations contained in the ‘Vikileak tapes’. *Further, the Committee may have to go beyond what the people named in the tapes and what other Ghanaians volunteering information may say, so as to the collect additional and extensive records on financial transactions that may have affected the private accounts of any of the nine judges, as well as to collect and study electronic communications to and from the nine judges that took place around the relevant period of time preceding 29th August 2013, so as to establish whether any electronic communications collected collaborate or contradict whatever information that may have been obtained by the Committee from witnesses. *To get a fuller picture of whatever might have transpired between the nine judges and the parties in the election petition case, or the ‘middlemen’ acting on behalf of the parties in the case, it might even be necessary for the Justice Date-Bah Committee to investigate the external banking transactions of the nine judges and their alleged ‘bribers’, so as to get the cash movements through the accounts of both the nine judges and the alleged ‘bribers’ that may have happened outside banking circles in Ghana. *Similarly, the Committee may have to cast its ‘investigative net’ wider beyond the catchment areas of the actual nine judges and look into the cash-flow trends in the domestic and foreign accounts of important relatives of the nine judges, as well as map out and plot all possible electronic communications that took place between the alleged ‘bribers’ and important relatives of the nine judges.
To cut matters short, for the work and the final report of the Justice Date-Bah Committee to be seen as convincing by independent Ghanaians and non-Ghanaians, members of the Committee must be given ample time to enable them to do all or most the work above. The current completion-time of two weeks given to the Committee by the Chief Justice is woefully inadequate and, therefore, is being seen by [many] Ghanaians as ‘A SMOKESCREEN’. Unless the Justice Date-Bah Committee is given adequate time to do a really ‘good work’, whatever report that may emanate from the Committee risks being branded as ‘PRE-COOKED BY THE CHIEF JUSTICE’ by whichever of the two principal parties in the election petition case (NPP or NDC), against whom the Committee report will go in two weeks’ time.
I, therefore, end this write-up by suggesting to the Chief Justice that she should extend the14-day timeline to con¬clude the investigations to three months, at least, if she wants independent Ghanaians to believe that she (the Chief Justice) wants the report to be submitted by the Justice Samuel Kofi Date-Bah Committee to command domestic and international respect and acceptability.
