Private legal practitioner, Maurice Ampaw has berated former President John Dramani Mahama over his recent comment on the judiciary.
In an interview on Nsem Pii TV which was monitored by GhanaWeb, the lawyer said that even though the former president, as a statesman, has the right to speak on happenings in the country, his rights have limitations.
He added that Mahama must stop harshly commenting on issues in the country as if he is an ordinary grassroots member of a party.
“John Mahama, your right to express yourself as a former president, as a statesman, is not absolute. You must be guided. Looking at your calibre, you don’t just open your mouth. Let foot-soldiers speak the way you are speaking.
“You are a former president, you have dealt with the international community before. Your name is all over, you are an international person, you are a man of high moral character, you are a man of substance… so you don’t just open your mouth and attack a branch of the government that you want to take over,” he said in Twi.
Ex-President Mahama, at a forum held for lawyers of the National Democratic Congress on August 28, lamented that the judiciary has a ‘broken image under the leadership of the current Chief Justice.
He said Ghanaians were losing trust in the judiciary, owing to some of its unanimous decisions, a situation he explains as dangerous to the country’s democracy.
He stated that it would only take a new Chief Justice to chart a path to regaining public trust in the judiciary.
“There is therefore an urgent need for the Ghanaian judiciary to work to win the trust and confidence of the citizenry and erase the widely held perception of hostility and political bias in legal proceedings at the highest courts of the land.
“Unfortunately, we have no hope that the current leadership of our judiciary can lead such a process of change. We can only hope that a new Chief Justice will lead a process to repair the broken image that our judiciary has acquired over the last few years,” Mahama said.
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