Senior political science lecturer at the University of Ghana, Professor Ransford Gyampo, has expressed reservations about the appointment of three new judges to the Supreme Court.
The trio Henry Kwofi, Yaw Asare Darko, and Adjei Frimpong all Justices at the Court of Appeal were appointed following the retirement of some judges.
The appointment is subject to vetting and Parliamentary approval.
If confirmed, President Nana Akufo-Addo alone would have appointed 18 Supreme Court judges, the biggest number by any President in Ghana’s history.
Taking to Facebook, Prof Gyampo acknowledged the need for replacements after retirement.
However, he said it is about time the number of judges appointed to the Apex court is capped.
“We must think about the absence of ceiling on the number of justices that can be appointed to serve on the apex court of the land. In the US, there are 9 justices of the Supreme Court who sit to bring finality to matters.
“But in Ghana, there is no ceiling, and this is being exploited by very self-seeking, self-serving, self-aggrandizing, and self-perpetuating political cabals,” he wrote.
The political scientist buttressed his point with the Democracy Consolidation Strategy Paper (DCSP), prepared by the IEA-Ghana Political Parties Programme in 2008, and called for a review of the 1992 Constitution.
“What is the state of our Constitutional Review exercise that we spent huge sums of money on? We have just yielded to the plague of policy discontinuity, just because the process, though highly consultative, was initiated by a predecessor government.
“We were all worried when President Mahama indicated his desire to balance out the courts, but the reality is that, given the absence of ceiling on the number of justices that can be appointed to the Supreme Court, it wouldn’t be illegal if any future President decides to appoint 20 more justices to the Supreme Court to also have a firm grip of the judiciary. Is this the way we want to go as a nation?” he quizzed.
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