According to Godwin Edudzi Tameklo, Director of Legal Affairs for the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), the Ghana Bar Association (GBA) is exclusively concerned with criticizing former president John Dramani Mahama.

He asserted that the GBA has overlooked earlier efforts to improve the quality of justice delivered in the nation and argued that the Association should be concerned about the precedent it is currently setting.

“What the bar is interested in is not this kind of conversation, the one that enriches quality justice delivery but the partisan posturing and attacking H.E John Mahama. In the past, the bar itself sometimes suggested names for promotion. They will say this judge has done so and so and these are the quality of his judgements and so we as a bar suggest ABCD names for possible consideration but now what do we see?”
Godwin Edudzi Tameklo

According to him, Mr Mahama should be applauded for bringing up the judiciary matter so that it may be resolved.

His remarks follow the Ghana Bar Association’s criticisms of former president and NDC presidential candidate John Mahama’s remarks at the 3rd Annual Lawyers of the NDC Congress on Saturday, September 2, 2023, that President Akuffo Addo had purposefully stacked the court to avoid accountability when it was out of power.

GBA Condems Mahama Comments

Saviour Kudze, the GBA’s public relations officer, responded to the news by stating that Mr Mahama’s comment was inappropriate and unsupported by facts. He claimed that while there is nothing wrong with Mr Mahama encouraging a group of lawyers who have identified themselves as NDC lawyers to accept positions on the bench, disparaging the same judiciary—an important institution that he hopes to oversee as President in the future—is not the best.

But the NDC’s Director of Legal Affairs, Edudzi Tameklo, who attended the NDC lawyers’ conference, disagrees with the critics of Mr Mahama.

On Saturday, September 2, former president and NDC flagbearer, John Dramani Mahama spoke at the third annual lawyers conference of the National Democratic Congress (NDC). In his remarks, he criticized President Akuffo Addo and the ruling New Patriotic Party for deliberately packing the judiciary, particularly the Supreme Courts, to avoid accountability when it is out of power.

He asserted that the NPP administration had a deliberate plan to select judges who would be favourable to the NPP. As a result, he said, the court is stacked with NPP-friendly justices. In his remarks on Saturday, the former President asked the NDC lawyers to start thinking about a career on the bench to level the playing field.

The public’s reactions to the former President’s statement have been mixed, with some stating that they agreed with him and others that they did not.

Similar comments concerning the judiciary have been made in the past by the former president, who said on August 28, 2022, at the 2nd Annual Lawyers Conference of the same National Democratic Congress that a new Chief Justice would be needed to repair the “battered image” of the Ghanaian judicial system.