File photo: Judges On February 25, 2021 the Judicial Service of Ghana took an unprecedented step of issuing a warning to all media houses, through its lawyers, against “publication and/or permitting the publication of…incendiary, hateful and offensive statements, and speeches on their various platforms against…Justices”. The legal warning urged affected media houses to, among others, “pull or cause to be pulled down and cleared from your platforms, all statements and speeches which convey and/or insinuate hateful, spiteful, vengeful and incendiary communication against Justices…especially those hearing the election petition”.
While some people have criticised the Judicial Service by describing the legal warning variously as gagging the media, gagging freedom of speech, contempt of the people, et cetera, others have suggested that it is the conduct of Judges that erode confidence in the Judiciary and not the opinion of the people. I’d like to focus this short article on the suggestion that it is the conduct of Judges that erode confidence in the Judiciary, not the opinion of the people.
First of all, it is very dangerous to generalize grievances in order to justify every other conduct, legitimate or illegitimate. What specific conduct of Judges are we talking about here? What specific concerns has the Judicial Service raised? Were those concerns as a result of the people’s reaction to the conduct of Judges in general, or specific to those people’s unhappiness with rulings of the Justices of the Supreme Court in relation to the 2020 Election Petition? Any suggestion that some people are justified in threatening Justices of the Supreme Court as a result of “the conduct of Judges” is totally misconceived and only creates a mob mentality among such people, who feel emboldened to pursue their agenda because everything they say or do is justified under the broad umbrella of freedom of speech and “the conduct of Judges”.
What really is the cause of the current impasse between the Judicial Service and a section of the media/public? It is simply that some people who are not satisfied with the rulings of the Supreme Court in the ongoing Election Petition, have gone to what the Judicial Service sees as extreme ends to attack the Court and to threaten Justices of the Court. The Judicial Service has not suggested that the public cannot express any opinion on the Court and its rulings. Indeed, framing the issue as ‘the conduct of Judges versus opinion of the […]