Edudzi Tamakloe Has Been Practicing Law in the Laps of Rawlings

He may pride himself in being a first-rate lawyer who is intimately familiar with the intricate contours of Ghana’s judicial system, but in the case involving Dr. Ezanetor/Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings, the eldest adult-child of the late former President Jerry John Rawlings, it was not the legal prowess or genius of Mr. Godwin Edudzi Tamakloe that won the day in court, over the fact of whether, indeed, Dr. Agyeman-Rawlings was an active dues-paying member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) who qualified to gun for Parliament on the party’s ticket in the Klottey-Korle Constituency in Central Accra. Rather, it was the deliberate and crude arm-twisting by Mr. Johnson Asiedu-Nketia, the dynastic General-Secretary of the National Democratic Congress, and Chairman Rawlings that spooked and coerced the members of the Wood Supreme Court who sat on the case into overruling the clearly justified and wholesome and evidence-based verdict of an Accra High Court Judge, by the half-forgotten name of Ackah, as I vividly recall, which thoroughly and effectively disqualified the Rawlingses’ pet daughter (See “It’s a Joke – Edudzi Tamakloe Replies Oppong-Nkrumah’s Statement on Subpoenaing John Mahama” Ghanaweb.com 2/14/21).

You see, ever since the Rawlings-Tsikata Diarchy brutally assassinated the three Akan-descended Accra High Court Jusges, namely, Justices Cecilia Koranteng-Addow, Kwadwo Agyei Agyepong and Frederick Poku-Sarkodie, for allegedly correcting some of the judicial excesses of the erstwhile Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), Ghana’s legal system and juridical establishment has lost much of its integrity and hitherto fairly good repute. Since June 30, 1982, it has all been downstream with the two-decade total domination of the nation’s political culture by both the Rawlings-led Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) and the National Democratic Congress itself. It is now, therefore, with the epochal passing of the former maximum dictator that Mr. Edudzi Tamakloe has a genuine chance to be able to show his true legal prowess or mettle, that is, the stuff of which he is truly made, in Shakespearean parlance.

Until now, it has all been a free ride for the Keta Schoolboy, literally speaking. Now, he is going to be on his own, although it can also not be gainsaid that this young legal practitioner, as opposed to legal light, has the remarkable likes of Mr. Tastsu Tsikata and Mr. Anthony “Tony” Lithur to mentor and guide him. In the matter of whether the petitioner of the 2020 Presidential Election could be called to the stand, after the counsel for the second respondent has formally delivered their closing remarks, this is patently absurd because there is absolutely nothing in the law books that says that, somehow, only the petitioner can seek to have his Dead-on-Arrival (DoA) case reopened or resuscitated at will. I also sincerely don’t even think that it is worth discussing the fact of whether the prime petitioner in the 2020 Presidential-Election Petition needed to have taken the witness stand or not; it was simply a matter of course. In other words, s/he who makes a case has a bounden obligation to prove the same, not deviously and mischievously attempt to jujitsu his way cheaply through the same by childishly and luridly supposing that he could trip or trick the first respondent, that is, the Chief Returning Officer of the 2020 Presidential, into facilely achieving the same on behalf of a badly defeated petitioner or plaintiff.

It also goes without saying that a petitioner who cannot even put the basic contours of his own petition or grievances together, even armed with high-powered legal expertise and assistance, has absolutely no right, whatsoever, to cavalierly presume to take up the precious time and resources of the Apex Court and the Ghanaian citizenry at large for granted. Ultimately, however, and I have maintained this several times in previous columns, it is the ATUGUBA PRINCIPLE that holds sway here or has an overriding significance here. And it is the simple fact that elections are incontrovertibly won and lost at the polling station, and not in the courtroom or the courthouse. We all learned this as far back as 2012, during the course of the Akufo-Addo-initiated Presidential-Election Petition. This is what a serious and a hypothetically astute Lawyer Godwin Kudzo Edudzi Tamakloe ought to be focused on, not the equally facile and infantile gauntlet thrown in for the mere sake of debate or argument by Mr. Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah, Nana Akufo-Addo’s Information Minister.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

February 15, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]