In my last Take, I expressed joy about a fund mobilization drive by Attorney-General Godfred Yeboah Dame to help the law reform and legal aid commissions in their work.

On Wednesday, the President launched the two funds for the two institutions with GHC 1m each as seed money. He, CEO of IPMC and an energy company made separate donations amounting to GHC400,000.00 to these funds.

Guess what, many shook their head in utter disbelief when chairman of the Legal Aid Commission Board, Justice Nene Amegatcher disclosed that the Commission was allocated GHC7,000.00 for the whole of 2016 for its critical access to justice program.

This year, an amount of GHC 20,000.00 said to have been released to it had not hit the accounts as at 10^th August. Now you may appreciate my excitement for this staff and resource-starved Commission that is still managing to serve the poor who cannot afford legal services.

It is in 11 regional capitals and 46 districts. Check this, in the first half of 2022, it received 7,558 court cases, and resolved 3,163 of them. It received 4,414 ADR cases and resolved 2,233 of them.

Justice Amegatcher wishes the appeal for funds regularly done by media organizations will extend to this noble cause. This democracy is only secured if we give true meaning to the rule of law, and that means giving the poor and vulnerable access to justice.

Justice Jones Dotse reechoed the need for lawyers to offer free legal services to the poor because they simply cannot afford. He actually wants pro-bono services to be made a mandatory requirement for the annual renewal of licenses of lawyers.

Individuals and organizations should think about donating to the fund. But I repeat my call in 2017 for a policy to streamline paralegal training and allow paralegals to practice in our district courts.

The courts remain the preserve of lawyers. 90% of the few lawyers called to the Bar each year stay in cities especially Accra, and that will not change in the next five decades.

The Constitution commands that anyone who is arrested, restricted or detained has a right to a lawyer of his choice.

It is obvious the state is unable to fulfil that duty. Let paralegals bridge that gap. They may be able to help some chiefs appreciate that if a journalist or a member of their communities knowingly uses disrespectful or insulting language or insults a chief by word or conduct, it is an offence punishable by up to GHC 2,400 or three months in jail or both.

That’s according to a rather disturbing section 63 of the Chieftaincy Act, 2008. This was introduced years after the offence of insulting the President was scrapped.

The Supreme Court held in 2011 that it is against the fundamental human rights and freedom of movement of a person to punish them for deliberately refusing to honour a call from a chief to attend to an issue.

It is a violation of articles 21 and 162 of the Constitution to purport to ban journalists or a media house from covering or broadcasting a public event because they are critical, disrespectful or insulting.  Let due process prevail under the rule of law.