After The Hysteria

Now the hysteria and shock appear to have subsided somewhat. Ghanaians can now put on their thinking caps and winnow the grain from the chaff as represented by the judicial corruption brouhaha.

We had momentarily removed these caps as we suffered the shock of the judges' heartbreaking goof. We wondered how such a hallowed department of state can be afflicted by the corruption contagion.

Now that the dust has settled we are in a better position to think analytically and find out what really went wrong.

The last bastion of democracy – of justice in a country so much riddled with corruption – has itself been contaminated by a moral malaise. Now that we have accepted this fact after many years of dignifying it with a perception tag, shouldn't we come to terms with the fact that the judiciary, being part of the greater Ghanaian society, could not have been spared the poison chalet?

Let us not revel in the corruption that has afflicted the judiciary but to accept the truth that our country needs a moral deliverance before we can think of moving forward.

Until we do that all the dais talk by one politician after the other about a certain nirvana in the horizon are all but wild dreams hardly reachable.

The media, public and civil service, and law enforcement system are all not safe from the infection that is corruption. We have noticed how even promotion in the judiciary, shoddy as it were, has hardly come under the public scrutiny. What is not corrupt about such promotions when elevation to the Supreme Court has been contaminated by an element of politics?

Names of qualified persons were presented for consideration for such elevations but which did not meet the standards of the man on whose desk the buck stops.

Promotions have been made so that when the need arises governments can count on persons whose backs they scratched.

Qualified judges who deserve elevations have been marginalised because they are not politically correct or have even stepped on the foot of government directly or indirectly by their insistence on the principles of law.

Measures are available to avoid such factors in the matter of promotion of the lords of the bench, but these have been breached brazenly over the years. When corruption in the judiciary was suspected and mentioned in various write-ups and public speeches, these were regarded as hearsay. Now the cat is out of the bag and we are the wiser.

Let us be measured in our reveling of the corruption that has afflicted the judiciary, for when the other departments of state come under the spotlight, we would be more shocked at the quantum of rot.

Let us put all departments of state, the presidency inclusive, under the microscope as a preliminary step. Until we do that we could be light years away from an effective remedy.