Between Due Process, Public Tribunals

We shall continue to touch on the smelly and obnoxious subject of public tribunals and the unconvincing tales about its so-called supplementary role in the justice delivery system.

It is anathema which no well-meaning Ghanaian should welcome back into the country.

The thought behind its promotion and subsequent legislation is to remove the obstacles which due process bring in the way of revolution-minded individuals in the National Democratic Congress (NDC) as they set out to persecute political opponents.

The inherent checks as contained in due process is something the revolution-minded NDC activists abhor and would do all they can to replace what they can manipulate to their advantage. The public tribunals as they intend to constitute them would use the much dreaded blueprint of the 80s to further their bloody cause.

Such elements would rather tribunal rating adjudications are disposed of within 49 days and should be devoid of the necessary legal technicalities which ensure proper best practices and time-tested justice delivery.

Were the dead able to talk, those who died when they were presented before the faceless judges making up the tribunals of the 80s would have joined in kicking against the re-ignition of the anathema which sent hundreds to their early graves.

Is that what we want returned to this country which has moved on since the inception of constitutional rule? Certainly no.

For those obsessed with bringing their political opponents who allowed them to dodge prosecution for double salaries, the best way to achieve their wicked goal is the reintroduction of the public tribunal.

Allowing a reintroduction of kangaroo courts which slapped crazy sentences upon the accused is to show preference for national backwardness.

We can bet that had the previous political administration ruled with the mindset of thwarting due process and not supportive of the rule of law as it were, many appointees of today would have been in jail. That however was not the stock-in-trade of the government at the time.

With the contrary being the mindset of the incumbent administration, which is nostalgic of the 'revolutionary days', the temptation for public tribunals is too irresistible to be ignored. Not when the numbers in Parliament can be manipulated to achieve a goal regardless of public opprobrium.

The similarities between the public tribunals and the prevailing reset judiciary, as well as the general operation of the state's investigative entities are too palpable to be brushed aside.

The hefty bail conditions, the Gestapo-class arrests and the hiding of suspects away from their families and even their lawyers, not forgetting the extraction of pleas under duress, all show similarities of the revolutionary period of the contemporary history.

Beating of political captives in the dungeons of security agencies to extract pleas and confessions have been alleged in recent times; traits of the public tribunal days, and they want us to sing hallelujah for this?

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