A member of New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) communication team, Edmund Kyei, has said he is baffled by the recent comments of former President John Dramani Mahama on the Judicial Service.
According to Mr Kyei, the former president’s comments were “unfortunate” and amounted to a threat to the judiciary.
John Dramani Mahama was on record to have said the image of Ghana’s judiciary is “broken” under the leadership of Justice Anin-Yeboah.
As a result, he hopes a new Chief Justice leads an image-cleansing crusade in the near future since the current Chief Justice cannot lead such a process.
Whiles addressing a conference of lawyers of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) on Sunday, August 28, 2022, he furthered that the judiciary has now become the butt of jokes due to its biased rulings and decisions on cases with a political tinge.
The comment has since generated two different schools of thought: those who believe the former president’s comment was worth taking as a piece of advice and those who consider it is an indictment of the service.
However, speaking on Angel FM’s Anopa Bofoↄ morning show Wednesday, August 31, 2022, the NPP communicator described Mr Mahama’s comment as inappropriate due to the latter’s political status.
“First of all, it is unfortunate for a former president of Ghana to say that the Apex Court is political bias. As a former president, such words shouldn’t have come out of his mouth.
“My brother, let me tell you this because if you carefully analyze the statement, it is an indirect threat to the Chief Justice. Even this is even a threat to the judiciary because NDC Lawyers will not be happy to hear such comment,” he told the host Kwamina Sam Biney, in the Twi dialect.
In Edmund Kyei’s view, the pronouncement made by the former President is “unjustifiable and distasteful” which must not be entertained, because the basis for his assertion is questionable.
Mr Kyei who doubles as the first Vice Chairman for Asokwa Constituency in the Ashanti Region further cited the NDC’s challenge of the Electoral Commission at the Supreme Court following the 2020 elections as a “waste of time,” because their exhibits were “untallied,” showing that they were unprepared.
He urged Mr Mahama to be cautious of making such commentaries against the background that he is a former head of state.
He also asked him to apologise to the Judicial Service since he has dragged their reputation into the “gutters”. He holds that not only do the comments put the image of the judicial service into disrepute but they also make the general public “lose confidence” in it.
