Legal Practitioner, Kweku Paintsil has opined that describing judges as "political", exposes them to public ridicule.

According to him, it suggests that any ruling by the said judge is based on their political leanings rather than rule of law.

His comments were in reaction to Madina MP, Francis-Xavier Sosu’s utterance during the NDC-led 'Yentua' demonstration.

The MP said, “If you make yourself a political Judge, you will be treated politically, and your tenure of office will run with the political party that you favour”.

Commenting on the Madina MP’s assertion, Mr. Paintsil said, “If you call a judge a political judge, the point that you’re making, I’m talking about it’s a form of innuendo it’s a form of suggestion, you’re trying to suggest that that judge takes decisions based on his political persuasions.

“In other words, he will only align himself with the view of the particular political party who brought him into office, which indeed does not reflect the reality on the ground.”

He noted that even though judges are appointed by politicians, it does not undermine their independence, thus such suggestive comments are injurious.

“To the extent that first, you make a remark that there are political judges when in law, there’s nothing like a political judge. In other words, judges are appointed by politicians but the Constitution provides safeguards.

“They are under no control. Once they go through the processes of being sworn into office, they become independent and therefore we don’t look at our judges and begin to look at who became a judge when who was in power, that is not how we categorise our judges,” he said.

Mr. Kweku Paintsil, however, noted that judges do have political leanings, but these are not supposed to be brought to the fore in their rulings.

“Judges do [have political affiliations]. But you’re not supposed to bring it out in the open. A judge can never sit on the bench and state that he belongs to a particular party. Other than that, they have to recuse themselves in as many cases that come before the court which are brought by politicians,” he said.