President John Mahama
Multiple ways are available to bad politicians to achieve their negative ends.
When such politicians for instance want to circumvent the constitution to vie for another term in office through election, they can go for a judicial interpretation as to whether or not their earlier terms of four years which were not renewed should be considered as independent of the second one when they returned and won in the polls.
Since there are many ways of killing a cat and because of the complexities involved in the constitutional amendment to allow the foregone, such bad leaders can tamper with the composition of the judiciary.
The final establishment of a one-party state in the country did not start overnight. It went through a gradual process, albeit unnoticed to the uninitiated to the complexities of politics. The application of the Preventive Detention Act (PDA) and arbitrary arrests and a culture of silence were part of the creeping one party state.
One day President John Mahama vented his frustration about what in his opinion were many judges appointed during the Akufo-Addo tenure. National Democratic Congress (NDC) aligned lawyers too, he said, would be encouraged to eye places on the bench.
It is clear that such a remark from a political leader is unacceptable because it has the tendency to deny the judiciary the sanctity it requires to be relevant and effective in managing the rule of law regardless of whose ox is gored.
The judicial re-engineering or resetting as the President has set upon himself to do to achieve this obnoxious end is glaring, indeed not too difficult to discern.
Continue to denigrate this arm of government and eventually deny it the authority to perform its constitutional duties, is one of the means of weakening the judiciary. Tags such as Unanimous SC became favourite references used by the NDC and President Mahama when he was in opposition.
Any attempt to create the impression that the judiciary can give judgment whimsically and not in conformity with the law is dangerous and should not be encouraged in any society which wants to be ruled by law and not man or arbitrariness.
Enter a flurry of flawed petitions which complaints have been presented to the President and intended to have him remove the Chief Justice from office. It is part of a long journey engineered on the corridors of power.
One of the petitions is that the Chief Justice failed to establish regional tribunals, and another she called for additional judges to assist her.
With a so-called prima face case having been, as it were, established against the Chief Justice by the Council of State and therefore paving the way for her suspension, the President justifiably smiled. His game plan is being rolled out with precision and perfection.
If what is out there in the public domain and based on intelligence from NDC insiders is anything worth considering, then Ghanaians have cause to resist the removal of the Chief Justice by whatever constitutional means is available to them, such as demonstration as planned by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and other political parties and incessant resistance in the media inter alia.
The bottom-line is to have a judicial interpretation that would enable the President to vie for the presidency once his constitutional last chance is exhausted.
We have read between the lines and demand of all shades of Ghanaians to rise against this unacceptable project of President Mahama. Ghana deserves strict adherence to the tenets of the Constitution.