ORDER OF THE DEAD VULTURE

Mrs Georgina Wood, Chief Justice of Ghana:

The Kenya panel did precisely what it had said it would do, and handed down a verdict on the election petition, on 30 March 2013. Two weeks to the day.

But instead of presiding over the Supreme Court yourself to determine the petition, you, Madam, rather constituted a panel chaired by a Supreme Court judge who appeared to have dodged classes when lessons in English syntax were being taught.

Not only was this judge notorious for speaking in half-sentences, but also, he seemed to be unduly emotional, whereas judges, in order to render “blind” justice, ought to be cold and detached and sometimes  technical.

This judge got angry when asked to recuse himself, though the petitioners were legally entitled to demand that he did so, if they did not fully trust in his impartiality. It is not a pleasant  occurrence in court, of course, but neither is sentencing. But judges are required to encounter both.  It comes with their territory.

This judge was incensed by admittedly illiterate comments made outside the court, so much so that he imprisoned two commentators, though in a case that is not being decided by a jury, but by eminent Supreme Court judges supposedly incapable of being influenced by outside ejaculations, the sub judice rule must necessarily be of limited, if not academic, interest only. Contempt of court rules could easily have been overlooked as well.  Can you, Madam, see Lord Denning imprisoning someone because of silly comments the person had made on a case on which Lord Denning was sitting? I dare-say Lord Denning would have laughed at the idea.

Madam CJ, the judge you appointed to preside over this most important case was an unmitigated flop.  And that YOU selected him was a disastrous blot on your record. He allowed one witness to be cross-examined in a most boring and repetitious manner by parrot-simulating counsel, for a period of thirteen days – that, is, only one day shorter than the period taken by the Kenya Supreme Court to dispose of the entire election petition before it!

Worse, the case as a whole was spread over a period of eight months! Your Supreme Court  panel, Madam CJ, couldn’t have cared less whether Ghana burned or froze  to death during the period it treated the nation’s most highly-charged political case as if it was a mere land case of the sort which only those cursed from on high ever place before the courts of Ghana.

Madam CJ, did you get a feedback on what your fellow-countrymen made of that judgement when its full noisome version eventually appeared? Some said the eminent judges were bought and sold like kenkey and fish in the market! Kings were allegedly involved in the sale. One Deputy Minister indiscreetly “revealed” what she had heard, and things got so bad that  you  were forced to  appoint a committee — headed by a retired judge who should, in the eyes of many,  have presided over the petition case in the first place — to investigate what she had allegedly said onto a tape!

Indeed, when the full judgement was eventually published,  the Ghanaian public was shocked to  learn from its learned judges (pun intended!) that the absence of  signatures of returning officers on “pink sheets” did not matter; that “polling agents” were as important as the paid electoral commission officials, as far as the authenticity of declared results was concerned.

One judge, however,  endeared himself to the public by describing the reputation of our egoistic Electoral Commissioner as having been “torn to shreds”. The entire judgement appeared to many to be “bogus and fraudulent!”