In election year, the NDC comes up with wonderful promises to the people. Any time the people have swallowed their bait, they end up gnashing their teeth, like the experience of more than four years of dumsor.
Quite surprisingly, the NDC always has an ally in Media General, owners of TV3 and others to build castles in the air. Mrs. Betty Mould Iddrisu, a leading member of the NDC and a lawyer shared very weird views about the Judiciary.
We have not forgotten that she was once an Attorney General who must hold the Judiciary in high esteem instead of her lame attempt to impugn the integrity of the judges. We think during the election year, politicians experience all kinds of dreams, like what Betty Mould Iddrisu expects from voters in the Ashanti Region.
It is wishful thinking for her to expect that the Ashanti Region would fall for the NDC during Election 2024. This can only be a pipe dream just like her attempt to paint the Judiciary as very bias in favour of the governing NPP.
When the NDC is in government, it never raises a finger against the Judiciary and the Electoral Commission, but the narratives change the moment John Mahama is in opposition.
Perhaps, the NDC knows what it does to those institutions when it is in power, so it thinks another party in power is doing the same. Here again, the NDC is behaving like the executioner who fears to lie supine.
The NDC used to say that Parliament is a rubber stamp until one of its own, Alban Bagbin became the Right Honourable Speaker, who some observers say is the 138th Member of Parliament on the Minority side.
The NDC fears another humiliating defeat in December and therefore, it is constantly looking for scapegoats. One of its leading members, Mrs. Betty Mould Iddrisu, recently appeared on one of the country’s television stations, believed to be the megaphone of the NDC, to paint the Judiciary as a partial arbiter in the determination of cases, especially, political issues in the country.
She tried using the platform to appeal to the Chief Justice to adjudicate cases without fear or favour, otherwise public confidence in the judges is on the decline.
The NDC has no confidence in our public institutions when they are not in power. The NDC will always want to have their way. Ever since the NDC started scoring zero with the cases it sends to the Supreme Court, it thinks the Judiciary is against it. The NDC is uncomfortable with the unanimous decisions of the Supreme Court.
We think that to put it mildly, the legal team of the NDC is not up to the task. To be brutally frank, “womu abon”. That is why we are surprised at the behaviour of Betty Mould Iddrisu, a senior lawyer in attacking the Judiciary because the party’s cases have on most occasions been thrown out.
Unfortunately, Betty Mould Iddrisu is unable even as a senior lawyer to appreciate the fact that courtroom decisions are based on the law and the facts. It is not about our emotions, opinions and sentiments. Our judges cannot be manipulated even if there are some bad lots, and we expect Betty Mould Iddrisu to know better. She cannot come under our tutelage but as one of the female role models, she must live up to the expectations of those who listen to her.
The extreme partisan politics is silencing otherwise sane voices. We should return to the admonition of Barack Obama that Africa should build strong institutions but not men. It appears such admonition is lost on people like Betty Mould Iddrisu who was a senior member of government at the time Obama addressed our Parliament in 2009. Madam, come again to correct the wrong impression, otherwise forever hold your peace.