A Retired Judge of the Court of Appeals, Justice Isaac Douse, has warned ex-President John Dramani Mahama to be measured in his utterances against the Judiciary.
According to Justice Douse, the yardstick Mahama is using to claim the current Justices of the court are biased would be the same yardstick that would be used to judge his appointments to the court if he ever regains power.
“Time is like a stream: it flows. In due course, those who he [Mr Mahama] perceives to be biased will go by attrition of time and they will no longer be there; and, then, at that time, those who are in the stream will be his people and if the same yardstick is being used against them, can we be safe?” he queried on the Class Morning Show on Class 91.3Fm.
Justice Douse said it is the normal order of things that people complain about the judiciary simply based on where they are on the political spectrum.
“There are some people who are worshipping the Supreme Court as it is today and there will be people who will worship his [Mahama’s] Supreme Court, if he manages to also pack the court, as he is alleging the court has been packed in favour of the current government, then we will not have security in terms of justice and fairness and fair play?”
He said even though “it is good to complain”, that “should be about the end of it”.
Justice Douse added: “I’ll caution the ex-president to be very careful about some of these things.
“[Mahama must be] very cautious in his pronouncements because what he perceives now, can also be done to whoever he deems to appoint in due course and, by all means, when he becomes president, he might have to appoint some people to the Supreme Court or to other courts.
“The Supreme Court is a very important body, to which all of us will refer from time to time; and, if we drag it in the mud too much, it would affect everybody as well,” he concluded.
Mahama Attacks Judiciary
Addressing a conference of lawyers of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) on Sunday, 28 August 2022, ex-President Mahama described the judiciary as a joke now due to giving out verdicts based on politics rather than law.
“The phrase, ‘Go to court’ is, these days, is met with derisive laughter, instead of hope that one will truly get justice if he went to the court”, Mr Mahama explained.
He said: “If people are not poking fun about politics and inducements being used to sway the hand of justice in the lower courts, then it is poking fun and making statements about the 7-0 of the ‘Unanimous FC’ verdicts, which, mostly, involve cases of a political nature in our Supreme Court”.
“This is an unfortunate development”, he regretted, pointing out: “One of the scariest existential threats to any democracy is when citizens think their judiciary holds no value for them” or is of “no use to them, and this is the security threat that the national security apparatus tried to draw the attention of the nation to, recently but was poorly received by the President and his party”.
He added: “It is scary because it threatens the peace and stability of our democracy and we must quickly correct this fast-spreading notion”,
