Member of the National Democratic Congress’ legal team, Abraham Amaliba says former President, John Mahama’s comment on the Judiciary is a constructive criticism.

According to Mr Amaliba, Mr Mahama’s assertion is not an attack on the Judiciary arm of government.

“It is our national duty to constructively criticise the judiciary and you heard him say that the Judiciary, the judges have a fixed tenure of office and he implored them to ensure that they do not do the bidding of those who appointed them. That for me is a constructive criticism,” he stated.

His comment follows former President John Dramani Mahama's agreement with the Dean of the University of Ghana School of Law, Prof. Raymond Atuguba's research that revealed that it appears depending on which government appoints a judge, their rulings and judgments tend to favor the appointing authority.

Mr. Mahama, while addressing members of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) USA chapter in Boston, USA, indicated that most of the governance institutions have been politicised and cited the example of the Judiciary and their recent controversial judgements.

Speaking on Joy FM's Top Story on Monday, Mr. Amaliba stressed that Mr. Mahama’s comment is "predicated on recent developments within the judiciary, particularly the Apex Court.”

“In the recent case of Abdulai, you see the Supreme Court veering into an area that they themselves have indicated that where you have another organ of state doing its work, they will not interfere or trespass into those domains, and yet you have a Supreme Court trespassing into the legislature and striking down a provision or Standing Order in the Parliamentary orders. The question to ask is that are we saying that Parliament did not deserve a hearing?” he quizzed.  

Mr Amaliba said “the statement he made qualifies that use of politicisation. What he meant actually was in what he said, that look your tenure of office is fixed, your salaries are fixed go home with your salaries, you have nothing to fear so can you just do the work of the state and not any political party. That is the understanding of it and so that was not an attack, it was clearly a constructive criticism.”

“You heard him right when he talked about the birth certificate issue and you were in this country, you saw how Ghanaians rose up against that judgement. The uproar, the refusal to accept the ruling from the Supreme Court that our birth certificate cannot be used to identify us as Ghanaians,” he cited.