General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party says the seeming criminalization of the Judiciary by the NDC is only to divert attention from the incompetence of the Attorney General. According to Mr. Owusu Afriyie, the corruption allegations against the Judiciary is only to cover up for the strings of high profile defeats the Attorney General has suffered at the law courts. “The NDC are not complaining because they feel that judges are corrupt or that they are biased; they are complaining because they have lost cases upon cases as a result of lack of preparation or otherwise by their own Attorney General and that the call for the head of the Attorney General is now being diverted so that their footsoldiers who are clamouring for the head of the AG would now be deemed to mean they are losing cases because the judges are not on their side,” he told Joy FM's Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah on Wednesday. He was reacting to the calls by the ten regional chairmen of the NDC for a public forum to be held to scrutinize the performance of the Judiciary. “…They are worried because they are losing cases from the Asamoah Boatengs to the Wereko-Brobbys to the Maame Dokonos and so on and so forth,” He explained that the NPP also lost high profile cases including defeats to Sherry Aryittey when it was in power but did not accuse the judiciary of bias. “At that time they did not have any cause to say the judiciary were bias; were corrupt and that the acquittals were not proper. They did not complain, they were happy. Indeed powders were smeared on all those persons who had come out and won those cases,” he stressed. He admitted there is a certain level of corruption in the judiciary, one that is acknowledged by all, but insisted the recent wave of accusation by the NDC has nothing to do with the perceived corruption. In any case, the Chief Justice is taking steps to address the alleged corruption and to improve operations in the Judiciary, he noted. But the Deputy General Secretary of the NDC, Kofi Adams described the submissions of Sir John as contradictory. He found it intriguing that the NPP General Secretary will on one hand admit that corruption has tainted some of the judgments handed by the judiciary and turn around to accuse the NDC of unnecessary politicization of the judiciary. Mr. Kofi Adams said that the call for a public forum is in the right direction. He maintained that public fora sometimes bring out the best, adding once you know your job is not “peer reviewed” and is opened to the public you are more careful. According to him, all methods have been employed to weed out corruption in the judiciary, but the methods seemed not to work. He believes the public forum may be a panacea to the corruption in the judiciary. Story by Nathan Gadugah/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana