Justices Losing Usefulness of Being Democratic Salt?
A Judge could be likened to a “blind god” with whose white-cane they whip the thin air in search for the truth from nowhere but through multiple opposing mendacious professionals outwitting one another, in such art, as routine of irking a living.
Judge, therefore, must, by close of the day, choose to add his/her own version of probability to a conjectured truth; impose and enforce same as the fact: They mention seizure into prisons custody and liberties are curtailed; death, and life ceases to exist. That’s the unique power of superhuman-beings. It is for this uniqueness of power that judges are feared.
The Anchor, therefore, sees the emerging spotlighting of Ghanaian bench and, by large, judiciary as welcomed alert to averting a near future social catastrophe, because the country’s judiciary had never being battered and plagued with decadence – real or perceptive, than now.
When it is the paper’s belief that judges, as powerful as they are made, need and must live above reproach of all temptations the pleasures and vanities of this world could throw at them, we do not feel comfortable listening to public vilifications for the rising incidence bordering on official trust and honesty of our lords.
We are not only scandalized, but also embarrassed when it looks like they become more interested in displaying ‘ordinary’ common criminals’ types of corruption, in bribery and plain black and white lowness of gangsterism.
Well; as a newspaper, our allegiance first of goes to our publics and nation as we creed ourselves in a chosen profession which admonishes us to “cease telling the truth and cease being journalists”. We’ll therefore, continue to act like the “community cockerel that croaks at dawn to announce the arrival of a new day”.
It seems the Lords are back in the news again with reasons falling within the social grey areas. It is the 2021 Auditor-General’s report on MDAs that is revealing that the Judicial Service in 2021 auctioned some 19 official vehicles to some mentioned Judges without approval from the finance ministry.
“Our examination of records of the Transport Unit for 2021 revealed that 19 official vehicles were auctioned by the Service for GH¢1,023,507.96 without approval from the Minister of Finance” paragraph 739 of the report stated.
The Auditor-General is, therefore, recommending that the auction should be nullified, and the vehicles recovered.
The 2021 Auditor-General’s report disclosed that the state lost some GH¢1,080,913,824 to various irregularities in the Ministry’s Departments and Agencies.
The irregularities according to the report “represent either losses that had been incurred by the State through the impropriety or lack of probity in the actions and decisions of public officers or on the other hand, the savings that could have been made, if public officials and Institutions had duly observed the public financial management framework put in place to guide their conduct and also safeguard national assets and resources”.
The Anchor, however, want to believe the keepers of socio-justice system are not joining the free-for-all looting and or dissipation of national public asset. We want to believe, the affected judges and their cohorts were oblivious to the process leading to their achieving the ownership status of those state vehicles being appropriated, which is forming part of the huge loss of approximated GH¢1,080,913,824 to the state of Ghana.
The paper could only imaging how the involved justices would deal with similar cases of state loot crimes brought before them by a public-interest institution in a near future. That is where the moral issue crops up.
The Anchor refuses to accept that the very judges who are to help protect and safeguard public asset, would fall flat from their highest pedestal of public reverence to such abyss as we are being told today; this doesn’t speak well about the sanctity of the judiciary, a citadel of rule of law.
Judges are supposed to be the salt of democracies. What about if salt loses its usefulness?
The paper can also plead with the judiciary to start a holistic reformation to transform into the trustworthy institution it was known for. They should, in the name of God, refuse to join the political class of modern day Ghana, whose stock-in-trade only defines how to scheme and scam to loot what belongs to the state and for that matter, the good people of Ghana.
We had been of the view that since the uproarious expose by the famous “Anas Aremyaw Anas’s investigative video that gored hard, the judiciary respect, players would have embarked on vigorous healing-within; later incidents, however, reveal not only status quo remains, but situation worsening by day; a betrayal of public trust of a sort.
The Anchor reiterates that the recent spotlighting on the judicial inefficiencies and or inefficacies represent a welcomed alert to avert future catastrophe as has been seen in those perceived judicial-related vengeful days of 1982, a bleak we struggle every June 30th to contend with, since: Because, we need to first, identify the cause that produces the effect, before the way-forward.
