Ansa-Asare Should Listen to Himself More Before Opening His Mouth to Speak

He sports the Akan name of Kwaku Ansa-Asare, all right. But it is not clear to this writer whether the former Director of the Ghana Law School or Ghana School of Law was born and raised in a civilized and a reputable Akan family and household like Yours Truly did. Now, as far as the globally regarded politically motivated and professionally unwarranted dismissal of Chief Justice Gertrude Araba Esaaba Sackey-Torkornoo by the man the Founding-Father of whose own political party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), the late former President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings, bitterly described as Ghana’s most thoroughgoing corrupt postcolonial leader is concerned, when it comes to the talk or the subject of emotional and psychological maturity, it is decidedly uncontestable that the man who fairly and squarely lost the 2020 Presidential Election, and yet had the chutzpah to call for the head of then Chief Justice Kwasi Anin-Yeboah to be delivered to him, literally, on a diamond-gilt platter, is absolutely no classmate of the University of Ghana Law School and the Golden State of California Law School-educated Chief Justice Sackey-Torkornoo, when it comes to both intellectual heft or gravitas and emotional and psychological balance and maturity (See “Torkornoo has proven she wasn't “matured” to be Chief Justice – Ansa-Asare” Modernghana.com 10/18/25).

Already, both the Bar Association of England and Wales and The Commonwealth Association of Lawyers, the oldest and the most prestigious of its kind in the English-speaking world, have demanded that Chief Justice Sackey-Torkornoo be promptly restored to the position from which she was arbitrarily and untenably removed. As well, the Ghana Bar Association (GBA) has demanded that Chief Justice Sackey-Torkornoo has not misconducted herself professionally to warrant being removed from her position as President of Ghana’s Judicial System and Establishment. Among the Akan, we have a maxim that says that whenever one points one’s index-finger in an accusatory manner at one’s neighbor, one must be mindful of the fact that one’s other four fingers are squarely pointing are the self-righteous accuser.

In the wake of the grotesque and the farcical removal of Chief Justice Sackey-Torkornoo, some Mahama government insiders have been alleged to have accused Chief Justice Anin-Yeboah of many of the same indiscretions vacuously leveled against Mrs. Sackey-Torkornoo, including financial impropriety. Now, this is downright comical, since the same Article 146 of Ghana’s 1992 Republican Constitution that was dastardly and nefariously used to crucify Chief Justice Sackey-Torkor existed then as now and has, indeed, been on our statutory books since the inception of Ghana’s Fourth-Republican Dispensation in January 1993, but was never invoked to seek the removal of Chief Justice Sackey-Torkornoo’s predecessor, obviously because it was President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo who held the democratic reins of governance at the time. Of course. But then, if one may pertinently ask, how about the wantonly and the relentlessly persecuted Chief Justice Georgina Theodora Wood, who was President of Ghana’s Judicial Establishment under the Mills-Mahama 1.0 regime? Something is definitely out of whack and kilter here.

So, why was Article 146 never even been publicly and retroactively mentioned by legal experts of the National Democratic Congress, like Messrs. Tsatsu Tsikata, Anthony “Tony” Lithur, Abraham Amaliba and, you guessed it, to even retroactively and summarily effect the removal of Chief Justice Emeritus Kwasi Anin-Yeboah who, by the way, presently serves as Vice-President of the Judicial Committee of the International Federation of Football Associations (FIFA). Or was it just because Article 146 went AWOL under the watch of the Nyinahin native from the Asante Region and only reared up its ugly head, once again, for some inexplicable reasons, when Chief Justice Sackey-Torkornoo became President of Ghana’s Judicial Establishment?

But that Article 146 had only once before been used for the removal of a much lower public official, namely, the constitutionally illegally transferred Mrs. Charlotte Kesson-Smith Osei, at the time Chairperson of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), to the Electoral Commission (EC), following the inglorious departure of Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, it can scarcely be gainsaid that the flagrant and the clearly unwarranted removal of Chief Justice Sackey-Torkornoo is inescapably laced with an element of vindictiveness, although the circumstances leading to the removal of both public officials are absolutely incomparable in both degree and merit.

It is only psychologically and emotionally short-curcuited intellectual and logical basket cases like the former Director of the Makola-based Ghana Law School who could so casually ignore the unspeakably bogus set of circumstances surrounding the globally embarrassing Pwamang Committee that unprecedentedly devalued the quality of Ghana’s judicial culture and protocol before the international community of civilized nations in ways that Our Beloved Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana is highly unlikely to recover from anytime soon, to so obtusely claim that since this ramshackle committee claimed to have obtained its legality and legitimacy from Article 146 of Ghana’s 1992 Constitution, therefore the entire ignominious process was sanctioned by statute and established protocol.

But then Ansa-Asare is a veritable charlatan who sat idly by and even applauded thunderously, while the leadership of the National Democratic Congress sicced party thugs on the Electoral Commission’s Returning Officers, Monitors and Polling Agents and literally burned and destroyed pre-collation ballot boxes on the night of the December 7, 2024 General Election, and cavalierly claimed that such act of unspeakable barbarism exemplified the finest of Ghana’s democratic dispensation. Maybe if he had a dressing mirror in his bedroom, the perennially scowl-faced and mean-looking and clearly mean-spirited Mr. Ansa-Asare would give his morally and intellectually intemperate effusions a second and a more sober look. The man is simply an arrant fool in a well-tailored suit.

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
E-mail: [email protected]