Chief Justice Gertrude Torkornoo has offered to do her best to dismantle situations that lend themselves to corrupt practices within the judiciary.

The CJ says she expects to face some whining in her attempt to undo those enablers, and she intends to ignore such whiners, however, she wants citizens to take a stance against corruption and avoid it, seeing that it is undesirable.

In an exclusive interview with Newsfile host, Samson Lardy Anyenini, Chief Justice Torkornoo said the corruption conversation is a national, cultural conversation that must be dealt with.

"I think that a lot of what we term corruption comes from the way we relate, in the sense that somebody goes into a place, asks; how do you get this done? The public official says this is how it's done, and the person thinks, let me give you a gift. So it's just some of these social practices.

"And then also there’s the rent-seeking behaviour of persons who have discovered that if they exploit their positions, they can make income. How do you stop that, you know, so I can only ‘beg’ citizens to also take a stance. They know they don't like it, they shouldn’t do it.”

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Chief Justice Torkornoo recalled the very expression she used during her vetting, ‘judicial predators’, explaining that from her time at the High Court as a trial judge, to leaving the Court of Appeal, she discovered that parties in a case could actually tell each other they had gone to see a judge when in fact they do not even know the judge.

She said such claims could not be true, recounting how a family member had gone to her claiming that they had been told that a party in a case before her had come to see her.

 “It’s not as if the practice doesn't exist. I'm not pretending that it doesn't. But what I'm saying is that a lot of the conversations are not premised on facts.

“Even case management, you get people carrying on about why case management is being done, you understand me. These situations can happen. So I think that all I can do, or what I ought to do, is any situation or any circumstance that lends itself to abuse, I should try as much as possible to dismantle that situation. And that's what I'll try to do. I’ll do my best to do, and when you try to dismantle it, you’ll get some whining on the side, and then I'll ignore that.”