Justice Kpegah's Mess

Justice Kpegah

Rising to the status of a Supreme Court judge is an achievement worth revering not only in Ghana but elsewhere in the world.

Remarks from such persons on issues, considering their many years of training and rich experience on the bench and in life, can therefore, honestly, not be ignored.

Justice Francis Kpegah, without doubt, is one such person who can hold his own in matters regarding the law and especially on the bench. His ability to articulate issues he believed in before he resigned from the bench is acclaimed in the legal fraternity even if we may not agree with his politics.

We won't go into the circumstances of the resignation, which is also another matter. Since his resignation from the bench and engagement in subtle judicial-political activities, there has been a noticeable degeneration in his logic and analysis of pertinent issues.

Some describe his current condition as senility. We think he is only trying to dabble in politics, a realm alien to his training and occupation. That is the reason for his confused and ludicrous interventions, mostly awkward in timing and circumstance.

Obviously, as an ethnocentric partisan practitioner in local politics, he has attracted a lot of sneers from many Ghanaians who have of late had cause to question his motives.

We have tried to ignore him as have others since his full-time entry into local politics which he is doing with reckless abrasion regardless of its effect on an already polarised Ghana.

Now that the old man has traversed the red line of political propriety and dragged himself to the firing range, he would continue to draw fire from political commentators and observers even as we are hesitant in doing so.

A few months before the last general elections, Justice Kpegah donned his political garment spewing various remarks in favour of one political party on the turf compelling observers to doubt his mental state. In fact, many concluded that the learned gentleman had lost his intellectual compressor.

His remarks were fired so carelessly and off-target that sometimes it was difficult to make sense from his diatribes.

From his haven in the NDC where he pitched camp openly since resigning his Supreme Court appointment, he soon earned the wrath of those who once-upon-a-time admired his erudition and professional gait.

One cannot begrudge him for his opinion and support for the party he openly and proudly claims he belongs to and has been working hard for mainly in the region he hails from. But he had hoped he would do these with subtlety, circumspection and a heavy dose of decorum considering his stature.

Hear him again in the matter of the ruling on the Ya Na murder describing it as awful and that the judge who sat on the case deserves one over ten if he (Kpegah) were marking him for promotion. Such a remark coming from a man we are aware is part of the legal team of President Mills can only provoke an avoidable political storm in an already charged atmosphere.

A little while ago, Justice Kpegah was among those stampeding the Attorney-General's office to drag people belonging to different political persuasions with flimsy charges from obtuse angles for prosecution.

Dragging people to court simply because they are one's political opponents as this man is seeking to do is a sure prescription for chaos.

Unless he is motivated by pure malice and deep-seated mischief, as we suspect, we believe he knows that a case badly prepared in which there are terrible and outrageous inconsistencies from witnesses stands no moment in court. The outcome will always be what we witnessed when the judge ruled in the matter to the embarrassment of government.

What he reportedly said in public about the judge's ruling, for us, to say the least, was unwarranted and above all shameful, given his legal pedigree. The warped remarks can be attributed to senility and not imbecility in our estimation.

Let Kpegah, as part of the President's kitchen legal cabinet, advise Mills to consider the other option–an appeal, and stop irresponsible public remarks.

Now that the Inspector General of Police has come out that he would set up a team to further investigate the Ya Na murder and the manner in which it was handled, we wish to recommend Kpegah for appointment as Chairman of this body. What a great opportunity for the resigned Supreme Court judge once again to excel and nail his perceived political 'murderers' at large.